A poem by Virginia Astley

When it is grim and you’ve forgotten how to go on
and it rains in a way you no longer recognize
you stand again in the strange ambivalence
of a place you loved where no one loved,
and where left to get on with it your withdrawal
grew until you lived in a world of hedgerows
and open fields filled with the whistle of starlings,
of chalk banks and beech woods where last thing
the little owl would call to anyone still awake.
And on the path you tracked across the seasons,
heard the chiffchaff, saw the swallow take the river’s bend,
you feel time spiralling until you stand on the bank
watching the leaving geese flying low, understanding
you are on your own.

Virginia will be among our guests at Caught by the River Avon. More info