{"id":893,"date":"2010-11-23T20:42:42","date_gmt":"2010-11-23T20:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=893"},"modified":"2010-11-23T20:42:42","modified_gmt":"2010-11-23T20:42:42","slug":"two-poems-from-esther-morgan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/two-poems-from-esther-morgan\/","title":{"rendered":"Two poems from Esther Morgan."},"content":{"rendered":"

Harvest<\/span>

For once when you asked\u2028<\/span>
I followed without question,\u2028<\/span>

brushing through the sour nettles<\/span>
\u2028that choke the gap in the hawthorn hedge<\/span>

\u2028\u2028to stand at the edge of this moment<\/span>
\u2028you have led us to:\u2028<\/span>

full and clear\u2028<\/span>
it rises like music over the wheat.<\/span>

Far off a back-yard dog\u2028<\/span>
starts barking at the stars\u2028<\/span>

and is answered in kind \u2013\u2028<\/span>
We are this far apart but not alone.<\/span>

Across the bone dry fields<\/span>
\u2028a farmhouse window is shining like home<\/span>

\u2028\u2028as a light will always shine\u2028<\/span>
when seen from a great enough distance.<\/span>



Hide Nor Hair<\/span>

By lunchtime the fields and private woods should be echoing,\u2028<\/span>
the doors of barns and outbuildings dragged open,\u2028<\/span>
their rusted machinery exposed to the sun.\u2028<\/span>
By dusk it should be serious as the river.<\/span>

It takes until nightfall to become a dream \u2013<\/span>
\u2028the creak of dark stairs, the back door sticking<\/span>
\u2028for the last time, that ring of mushrooms on the green<\/span>
\u2028blooming in the moonlight like a soul.<\/p>\n

*Esther Morgan<\/a><\/span>'s third Bloodaxe Books collection Grace<\/span>, will be published next year.  She recently won the Bridport Poetry Prize and was placed third in the Mslexia Poetry Competition.  She <\/span><\/span><\/font>is Historic Recordings Manager for The Poetry Archive and her own Poetry Archive recording can be heard here<\/a>.<\/font><\/span><\/font>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HarvestFor once when you asked\u2028I followed without question,\u2028brushing through the sour nettles\u2028that choke the gap in the hawthorn hedge\u2028\u2028to stand at the edge of this moment\u2028you have led us to:\u2028full and clear\u2028it rises like music over the wheat.Far off a back-yard dog\u2028starts barking at the stars\u2028and is answered in kind \u2013\u2028We are this far apart […]<\/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-893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893","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=893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}