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The Ashmolean is Closed<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019ve Skyped a few times, he\u2019s a Quaker, seems sane, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rosie Jackson<\/strong> lives in Somerset. Publications include What the Ground Holds<\/em> (2014), The Light Box<\/em> (2016), The Glass Mother: A Memoir (<\/em>2016). She won 1st<\/sup> prize at Wells, 2018. Two Rivers Press will publish Two Girls and a Beehive<\/em> (poems about Spencer) in 2020. www.rosiejackson.org.uk\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Ashmolean is Closed We\u2019ve Skyped a few times, he\u2019s a Quaker, seems sane, so I agree to a date, do Sudoku on the train, meet him at the station with a head full of numbers (eleventh hour, third age), we talk in code, walk by the Thames, detour through the cemetery […]<\/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-19776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19776","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=19776"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20018,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19776\/revisions\/20018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nso I agree to a date, do Sudoku on the train,
\nmeet him at the station with a head full of numbers
\n(eleventh hour, third age), we talk in code, walk
\nby the Thames, detour through the cemetery of Saint Sepulchre
\nwhere headstones crave permission to lie down.
\nWhen we reach the Quaker meeting house, which smells
\nof biscuits and philanthropy, he tells me there is no God,
\nwhile out in the streets, Oxford\u2019s polish is wearing thin,
\nthe pavements house more beggars than a rich city
\nshould boast. Near the market, a homeless woman speaks
\nto him in tongues, he buys me over-sweet flapjack,
\ntalks about his three wives, four sons, five dogs, six decades,
\nand when I look down, his flimsy shoes are not the footwear
\nto walk with me over hot coals, high mountains. I feel
\nmy heart divide to keep itself company, suggest we go,
\nas planned, to the Ashmolean, where Botticelli surely
\nwill redeem the day, Samuel Palmer will save me,
\nbut when we get there, the museum\u2019s closed \u2013 hasn\u2019t he lived
\nin this shining city long enough to know the Ashmolean
\nshuts on Mondays? \u2013 so he takes me in his car to meander
\npast places where he\u2019s worked \u2013 hospitals, institutions
\nfor the less than fully sane, insists his patients loved him,
\ntells me tales that should be zipped into non-disclosure pants.
\nAnd I see him as an animal rolling, long after early retirement,
\nin the left-behind scent of other peoples\u2019 lives \u2013
\ntheir broken lives, their secrets \u2013 and the smell\u2019s too much,
\nI rush to the train, dig out my unfinished Sudoku,
\npress into each remaining space my blessed singleness
\n\u2013 one, one, one, one, one.<\/em><\/p>\n