By Laura Potts Yes. Back then, I was child of a garden and pavement end. When homestead old was forest and fire, and high were the gold robes of fields which rose to my run, some say I tore up the moors. On that cold morning and grey, before day burst down a valley … Continue reading “Jane Doe #503”
“The Night Country”
By Laura Potts ‘The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns’ – Hamlet. Old winter hour, gloam and the glow of this last evening fire, after the time of the cold and away from my last-gasp hourglass and this passing grey; after the far-cast dust of my day when the half- light fields breathe … Continue reading “The Night Country”
“Me and Mrs Fisher”
By Laura Potts The world lit its lights and hung pearls in our eyes like trembling moons under darkling stars. The night saw the city asleep and aslope as the land fell away to the left and the right, the sight of the globes in your eyes nightjars in pale pools of light. I … Continue reading “Me and Mrs Fisher”
“Kitchen, Sinister”
By Laura Potts Ten springs gone in my morning of life, I wore light in the summer of my voice, in the candles once made of my eyes. That night dusk swung out and away into noise wild and white above town, and down in my childhood garden lost the pond breathed out light … Continue reading “Kitchen, Sinister”
“The Wise Child”
By Laura Potts I remember he fled from the fogdrop moors with the dawn and the bells of December beyond, calling morning to the streets while winter wept beneath the trees. A sleeping me before the door glowed on behind my mother’s knees. With holly-forest at his feet from leaping long the brawling leas, … Continue reading “The Wise Child”
“But then parts of you”
By Laura Potts But then parts of you are dead. I sent the world a postcard from a fusty window that said I am wearing my grief. Sling clothes into the bin: your socks, your skirts, the … Continue reading “But then parts of you”
“Sweet Autumn”
By Laura Potts And years later, you at the bus stop. Yesterday's leaves in your hair. The seat where we laughed. Our words in the air. Sweetheart. The years threaded up our names scratched on the glass. Rain argued away the grass-stained fingerprints, the love turned over on clumsy tongues, the moonbows, the flimsy … Continue reading “Sweet Autumn”
“Alma Mater”
By Laura Potts Widow-black and winter, evening took me south into lamps burning blue in the dusk. Out and over my hometown musk lay the hinterland hills breathing low in the dark. Still, frostspark sharp on the city streets, holy rain sweet in the winter and the wet, with no evening stars ahead I … Continue reading “Alma Mater”
“The Night That Robin Died”
By Laura Potts I remember it best as burnt lips and black that night when the mouth of the house spat you and your terminal news out to the stars and back. Before the last evening hours had passed, flame yielding life to the ember, the crack of your ash called a duskdark September … Continue reading “The Night That Robin Died”
Poems by Laura Potts
Friday The evening of your days I remember always on the other side of a hospice night. A funeral in my face, your ghostcandled fatherlight still laughing, bright, white in the winter of your age. The world in your ember days lit up its lights in a biblical rain. Long and far, the … Continue reading Poems by Laura Potts