In the Dales
after John Ashbery

it’s a special kind of empty
the footed earth, saluting the sky

so much to see
I took a photograph of you

posed in the window seat
punchy red slippers

blurring rock and field
the same window in five years?

jenny wren says yes, the crows caw no
what do they know

as days go by
certain details are already hazy

and new succeeds new
as we spread over the vast stone barns

of Swale and Wensley
and there we are, older certainly

walking to the monument
where there is no monument

the upper left corner of the sky
a history of what might have been

Gareth Writer-Davies: Hawthornden Fellow (2019). Shortlisted for the Bridport Prize (2014 and 2017) and the Erbacce Prize (2014). Commended in the Prole Laureate Competition (2015) and Prole Laureate for 2017. Commended in the Welsh Poetry Competition (2015) and Highly Commended in 2011. His pamphlet Bodies was published in 2015 followed by Cry Baby in 2017, The Lover’s Pinch in 2018, The End in 2019 and Wysg in 2022.