<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t come back<\/strong><\/p>\n I will turn to the woods. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chrissy Banks<\/strong> lives in Exeter. Her last collection was Days of Fire and Flood<\/em> and another, The Uninvited<\/em>, is forthcoming this year from Indigo Dreams. She has had poems in many magazines and anthologies, including And Other Poems, Antiphon, the Rialto, Orbis, the North, South <\/em>and Agenda.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you don\u2019t come back I will turn to the woods. To winter woods trees rising above their heap of leaves. I\u2019ll turn to the hills that endure rain, flood, fog, snow and storm the worst winds and fires of full sun. I will follow the river that keeps on flowing, keeps on […]<\/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":[138,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19558","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=19558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19559,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19558\/revisions\/19559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nTo winter woods
\ntrees rising above
\ntheir heap of leaves.
\nI\u2019ll turn to the hills that endure
\nrain, flood, fog, snow and storm
\nthe worst winds and fires of full sun.
\nI will follow the river that keeps on
\nflowing, keeps on carrying
\npike and trout and stickleback
\ndespite its sinkage of stones.
\nI\u2019ll turn to the garden
\nand watch how it dies
\nthen grows; to the swift visits
\nof winking-winged brimstones
\nthe patient journeys of ants.
\nAnd I will turn to the sea
\nthe sea that will rumble me
\nslap me awake, holding
\nits mirror to my face.
\nI\u2019ll look to the waves\u2019 rise and fall
\nmoon-pulled, thrown by wind
\ninto foam. Even to the cold
\ndeep seaspots, where I can stand
\nalone, till I\u2019m blue boned.<\/p>\n