{"id":477,"date":"2011-12-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-27T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=477"},"modified":"2020-12-14T11:15:34","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T11:15:34","slug":"the-third-day-of-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/the-third-day-of-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Third Day of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

How It Hits You<\/span>

Picking up the Christmas post<\/span>
from the old house,<\/span>
I unclench my fingers one by one from the steering wheel,<\/span>
breathe out.<\/span>
And in the lowering light<\/span>
against the hills of someone else\u2019s home,<\/span>
the yellow advent squares of the train<\/span>
come close to the road we travelled on.<\/span>

<\/span>

 <\/span>
*Deborah Alma<\/span> was born in London and lives in Ludlow. She writes poetry, runs poetry workshops for children and people with dementia and is studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Keele University. She is also Emergency Poet in her 1960's ambulance.<\/span>



Christmas Bees<\/span>
 <\/span>
Descendants of garden hives<\/span>
they accrue now in the roof,<\/span>
the tiles below their ingress<\/span>
black as char : one Christmas<\/span>
they sang the Hundredth Psalm to us,<\/span>
doxology of cisterns and rattle-sash-cords<\/span>
we crept up into the attics for, my sister and me,<\/span>
two sets of moon-bare feet following our father<\/span>
through terrain of leather cases, misted-over mirrors<\/span>
to a domain where something trembled and hissed<\/span>
as we drew nearer \u2013<\/span>
they were singing for us, our father said,<\/span>
only for us, and held up his finger \u2013 sshhhh \u2013<\/span>
so that black, swarmish choir inflated as one lung,<\/span>
punctilious, to hold the note, that rising hmmmmmm<\/span>
behind the flimsy wall. I thought of water\u2019s bursting<\/span>
roar, a thousand stings to eyes, ears, open throat\u2026<\/span>
someone must sing the bantling year to life, our father said,<\/span>
and someone must listen:<\/span>
I lie in my bed, that rocks as if upon a swell,<\/span>
still listening.<\/span>


*Pippa Little<\/span>'s most recent collection is <\/span>The Snow Globe<\/span><\/a> from Red Squirrel Press.<\/span>




Ann\u2019s house<\/span>

The range is lit, and in the kitchen we are talking <\/span>
about men and things that matter. <\/span>
Winter in the windows: cherries in a blue dish. <\/span>

Night wakes on the hills, goes hunting on the moors, <\/span>
breathes death to little things.<\/span>
The snow is wild, close by, but leaves us be.<\/span>

The fairy lights come on. <\/span>
We leave the old year littering the hillside, <\/span>
head out half-drunk for the Maynard Arms<\/span>
sipping wine-dark words, and singing poetry. <\/span>



*Jo Bell<\/a> <\/span>works across the UK on poetry projects including National Poetry Day, which she directs. She writes about 'the important things: boats, archaeology and sex' but some poems, like this one, fail to address these issues. She is currently preparing a second book to follow Navigation <\/span>(Cheshire, 2008)<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How It Hits YouPicking up the Christmas postfrom the old house,I unclench my fingers one by one from the steering wheel,breathe out.And in the lowering lightagainst the hills of someone else\u2019s home,the yellow advent squares of the traincome close to the road we travelled on. *Deborah Alma was born in London and lives in Ludlow. She […]<\/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":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twelve-days-of-christmas-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477","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=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23929,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions\/23929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}