{"id":1531,"date":"2008-12-26T11:04:38","date_gmt":"2008-12-26T11:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1531"},"modified":"2008-12-26T11:04:38","modified_gmt":"2008-12-26T11:04:38","slug":"kate-pottinger-is-walking-the-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/kate-pottinger-is-walking-the-woods\/","title":{"rendered":"Kate Pottinger is walking the woods"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deep Woodlanders <\/span>      <\/span>
 <\/span>

I do not see the ancient men<\/span>
I feel their eyes upon me in the undergrowth<\/span>
where foxes bark at night<\/span>
behind the trunks of trees<\/span>
half blackened by the rain.<\/span>
The birds are silent here but<\/span>
hidden in the canopy they watch <\/span>
the fusion of the present and the past.<\/span>
Sensing movement I turn round to see<\/span>
the tangled ropes which gently swing<\/span>
in glutinous, grey light<\/span>
where bodies thin as air and dry as dust<\/span>
have nudged them passing through<\/span>
and I would like to know<\/span>
if they see flesh and bone           <\/span>
and footprints on the muddy track<\/span>
and in another thousand years from now,<\/span>
if I, as thin as air and dry as dust,<\/span>
will peer from undergrowth<\/span>
where foxes bark at night,<\/span>
and watch the flesh and bone and footprints<\/span>
on the ancient, muddy track.<\/span>
                                       <\/span>

* Kate Pottinger is one of the co-founders of an arts cafe set up by one of IS&T's regular contributors Mandy Pannett and says this poem “rather came out of nowhere one damp afternoon in November when I was walking my dog in the woods.” She adds “I have been working on a novel for the last ten plus years and finished the final draft earlier this year amidst great celebrations and sighs of relief from those who had seen me through the very lengthy labour to the birth! Now the question is, what do I do with it?”<\/span>

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deep Woodlanders        I do not see the ancient menI feel their eyes upon me in the undergrowthwhere foxes bark at nightbehind the trunks of treeshalf blackened by the rain.The birds are silent here buthidden in the canopy they watch the fusion of the present and the past.Sensing movement I turn round to seethe tangled ropes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}