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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
 

The North Fields


Between times she walks the cut North Fields
by the river where sky goes on forever
and sees white bramble flowers, white horses
against green, and willow leaves

hungering a wind that never takes them, never
lets them go. The daytime moon is dumb
against the sky, a thumb-print in distemper on a wall;

and bells ring clear brought close by breeze
then snatched away again and as she walks
she observes one magpie, two, a heron still
gazing, then a blackbird, then a brimstone butterfly

so river flats unfold. Between times
she fills jugs and empties bowls,
hangs out cloths and towels, kneads dough.

Fruit - between times cut and cooked; thread through
the needle eye, between times pressed, between times put away

until she stands again to wait, alert for what is sudden;
always much too early or too late, and at the door
no moon now. Cold dew.
Owl. A twig-crack. Pipe smoke in the air.