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Likestarlings is a place for talking in poems. We pair poets with poets and they write a sequence of six new works by responding in turn to one another. Our palaver blog goes beyond poetry to discuss collaboration in theory and in practice. Please take a look, and feel free to add comments, opinions and suggestions here. Read poems here
 

January 9th 2009


It’s later than we walked before,
the sky is still salt glazed –
cracked.

I don’t know the name
of the field we cross
with its turnip-toppy crop.
My collie who used to run off all ziggy-zaggy
seems older now and happy to walk close -
sometimes she’s stirred enough to lift the crows.

Our boots and paws are clagged
with clay oozing mud from the thawing frost.
It sucks us in, we might be swallowed up
and there’d be nothing left for them to find
but a funny hat and my hand clutching an empty lead.

We pass the surprise of white hens –
who can’t have been there before
and cross Warren Road to the place
Hurricane P2673 came down in September 1940
and John Hugh Ellis was lost at 21.
We read this every day and the facts never change,
then we look up to see Canary Wharf
glittering like the fake Lighthouse wreckers lit.

Turning we head for home;
whipped by the wind
we pick up speed.
Home to the oranges
I left softening on the stove.
Oranges and a house full
of the smell of possibility.