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Fire lantern<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s a discredit to us, we humans, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Helen Calcutt<\/strong> is the author of two books of poetry, \u2018Sudden rainfall\u2019 (Perdika, 2014) a PBS Choice, and \u2018Unable Mother\u2019 published by V.Press in September 2018. Her writing is published internationally, including award-winning essays and reviews for The Wales Arts Review<\/em>, The<\/em> Brooklyn Review<\/em>, The London Review<\/em>, Poetry Scotland<\/em> and Boundless<\/em>. She is creator and editor of \u2018Eighty-Four\u2019 a new poetry anthology on the subject of male suicide.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fire lantern It\u2019s a discredit to us, we humans, that when something moves out of the sky, something like a ball of light, we don\u2019t see it. We catch a glimpse maybe, yes. But do we see? Do we take the time to watch it, like a slow hand moving one way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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-17897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17897","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17897"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17970,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17897\/revisions\/17970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthat when something moves out of the sky,
\nsomething like a ball of light,
\nwe don\u2019t see it.
\nWe catch a glimpse maybe, yes.
\nBut do we see? Do we take the time
\nto watch it, like a slow hand
\nmoving one way across the dark
\nwatch it burn, and think
\nthat must be agony. <\/em>
\nWe don\u2019t compare it, in our subtler minds,
\nto a bird that\u2019s caught fire.
\nOr a voice on the air that, for some reason
\nhas started screaming.
\nThere\u2019s milk out on the step
\n(in its own kind of light)
\nand then the baby in the bed
\nwho needs to be fed.
\nThe prospect of a morning
\nwithout money, or bread.
\nSo we can\u2019t know
\nif that thing.
\nThat ball of light,
\nthat bird,
\nthat voice,
\nfell over the dark and the trees,
\nat last, into burning leaves.
\nWe can\u2019t begin to imagine what happened to it.<\/p>\n