<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Christmas Morning – Wharfedale.<\/strong><\/p>\n We had to travel early along deserted lanes, You stopped to photograph the frozen woods, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lesley Quayle<\/strong> is a folk\/blues singer and poet, living and working in deepest, darkest rural Dorset.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Door<\/strong><\/p>\n There is no door.<\/p>\n How then to make an entrance? But there is a door.<\/p>\n One essential entrance, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sally Long<\/strong> has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East London and is a PhD student at Exeter. She has had poems published in magazines including Agenda, Haiku Quarterly, Ink, Sweat and Tears, London Grip, Snakeskin<\/em> and has work forthcoming in Poetry Salzburg Review. Sally edits Allegro Poetry Magazine<\/a> and is a member of Ver Poets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Christmas Morning – Wharfedale. We had to travel early along deserted lanes, the mist a gauzy cloth on fields and river, light thawing, promising little but a milky drift. Ghost trees harnessed the fell, frost rigged, quicksilvered, cutwork on the iron sky. The tops, ice-laden, unreadable beneath a smeared wash of cloud. You […]<\/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":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twelve-days-of-christmas-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9851","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=9851"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23849,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9851\/revisions\/23849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthe mist a gauzy cloth on fields and river,
\nlight thawing, promising little but a milky drift.
\nGhost trees harnessed the fell, frost rigged,
\nquicksilvered, cutwork on the iron sky.
\nThe tops, ice-laden, unreadable beneath
\na smeared wash of cloud.<\/p>\n
\nthe river, stalled by scales of ice, stiff reeds,
\nas if from a glass blower\u2019s crackling pipe.
\nCold drove you back, stamping, to the car,
\nyour breath, lung-fog.\u00a0 Home, you said.
\nThe road ahead a constellation of sleet.<\/p>\n
\nPerhaps a dramatic appearance;
\nenter angel stage left,
\nmaybe flying in
\nthrough the open window,
\nor else strolling,
\nnonchalant
\nfrom the garden,
\nsurprising her as she sits
\nat peace on the portico.<\/p>\n
\nthe threshold and boundary
\nbetween two spheres,
\nwhere space is shrunk,
\ntime and eternity
\ncollapsed into one,
\nthe passage between
\nearth and heaven
\nflung wide open
\nby her words.<\/p>\n