{"id":646,"date":"2010-04-23T17:56:54","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T17:56:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=646"},"modified":"2010-04-23T17:56:54","modified_gmt":"2010-04-23T17:56:54","slug":"melissa-collin-has-gone-tilling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/melissa-collin-has-gone-tilling\/","title":{"rendered":"Melissa Collin has gone tilling"},"content":{"rendered":"


Tilling<\/span>
 <\/span>

I work the soil with my own hard hands<\/span>
while my neighbour, his sky-blue eyes<\/span>
ringed with granite, stalks the fields<\/span>
like the elements that close hard fast around me.<\/span>
 <\/span>
The deep furrows in the raw sienna mud<\/span>
are waterlogged with bits of the sky.<\/span>
A rook swims across one, then another.<\/span>
He raises his gun. The shot thuds in my chest.<\/span>
 <\/span>
Birds scatter like thoughts; outwards.<\/span>
The kickback jolts his shoulder which is,<\/span>
I know, suede-soft and softly tanned, giving<\/span>
gently to the touch of my clay-hard hands.<\/span>



* Melissa Collin<\/span> says “I am a freelance editor living on the North Norfolk coast,
\n and have had poems published in <\/span>Ambit, Birdsuit<\/span> and various competition
\n anthologies.”<\/span>
 
\n<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tilling I work the soil with my own hard handswhile my neighbour, his sky-blue eyesringed with granite, stalks the fieldslike the elements that close hard fast around me. The deep furrows in the raw sienna mudare waterlogged with bits of the sky.A rook swims across one, then another.He raises his gun. The shot thuds in my chest. Birds […]<\/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-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","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=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}