Poem
John Glenday
The Widow
The Widow
The Widow
In the house where the smoke slides down the lum,She watches the clock compact its tensing coils;
Reeling time back to its hidden spool, as she waits
For her drowned man to be ferried to the sea.
“Where is the ship which will sail for the jug-lipped storm
Stern first, and the sea’s warp perfect through the bow?”
The tide shrugs shoulders, toys with a captive moon,
As the jetsam springs triumphant to the swell.
She remembers when she was old, and growing young,
While the stream climbed skywards on the brackened hill,
How she dreamed of a place where the glassy threads
Unwound to a single strand, in an unreflecting pool;
Where the butterworth shyly retracted its frail, blue face,
And the thirsty moss flourished, drawing in endless seas.
© 1989, John Glenday
From: The Apple Ghost
Publisher: Peterloo Poets, Calstock
Published with kind permission of the author.
From: The Apple Ghost
Publisher: Peterloo Poets, Calstock
John Glenday
(Scotland, 1952)
John Glenday was born in Broughty Ferry, near Dundee, in 1952, and lives in Drumnadrochit in the Scottish Highlands. His first collection, The Apple Ghost (Peterloo Poets, 1989) won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and his second, Undark (Peterloo Poets, 1995), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. His most recent collection, Grain (Picador, 2009) was also a Poetry Book Society Recommenda...
Poems
Poems of John Glenday
Close
The Widow
In the house where the smoke slides down the lum,She watches the clock compact its tensing coils;
Reeling time back to its hidden spool, as she waits
For her drowned man to be ferried to the sea.
“Where is the ship which will sail for the jug-lipped storm
Stern first, and the sea’s warp perfect through the bow?”
The tide shrugs shoulders, toys with a captive moon,
As the jetsam springs triumphant to the swell.
She remembers when she was old, and growing young,
While the stream climbed skywards on the brackened hill,
How she dreamed of a place where the glassy threads
Unwound to a single strand, in an unreflecting pool;
Where the butterworth shyly retracted its frail, blue face,
And the thirsty moss flourished, drawing in endless seas.
From: The Apple Ghost
Published with kind permission of the author.
The Widow
Sponsors
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère