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This is a repost of an old prose-poem of mine – years ago, 2011, just before my mum died, in the days when I was still writing poetry I didn't mind reading back – because I just came across it.

And I need to create a flow again – a dynamic, surprising flow. I've been writing poetry continuously since I was a teenager – until two years ago. My father's and then ex-husbands deaths seem to have dammed the flow, for the minute, though I am still writing prose. Since then, when I have written poetry, it's seemed mediocre. (Guess you'll relate to this stop-start nature of poetry, if you're also a poet?)

So I'm not posting this, below, because I think it's 'good'; just to try to wake something up in me; invite the gods and goddesses back. To make a small shrine.


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Rain storming down from the orchard with its turbulence of leaves and wind battering till all thought’s gone out

spent as matches and it’s a relief and then here I am again with the wet dog with books and poems as friends and a million different ways of greeting the world

                                                and there outside at last a single thin blade of sun insinuates itself like a bookmark between cloud

and something new pours down onto the hillside and I’m out there flying

            and it doesn’t matter whether sun rain wind or even sleet at the moment suddenly again what matters is simply being alive

                                    and how poetry can remind me of this even at times when I’m dense as peat-soil sodden and soaking it all up

                                                ready to transform it like worms compost      into something I can work with    something good    in bare hands    in the mouth                   something to slip between me and eternity and the terrible dread-filled joy of it all

© Roselle Angwin