Woods
Written by Liz Adams on Friday the 26th of November 2010
At the top of the stairs you told me;
your voice inside the wire travelled higher,
spread through my skull - pieces of our ancestry
encasing a moment no one could retract.
Outside, the sky shone white.
A girl flew her kite, higher, higher,
until it cut the clouds. Below, the lake -
its velveteen surface seemed to shake
with the image of you, sinking. I sat there,
watching my feet, waiting for someone to walk me home.
We walked, silently. Dropped the key.
Tea. The spoon clinked and clanked,
'Daddy.' The noun collapsed. Beneath, the poems
of Sylvia Plath. It wasn't the same.
I caught the train, watched the fens
until they became Sussex hills, full of rain
and the woods I walked though without you
where the snowdrops hung their heads, tearful, blue.
First published in The Frogmore Papers, No. 75.