Wild Weather
Poet: Tina Cole
December and the almost scent of hyacinth is burgeoning
beneath the stairs alongside fermenting fruit. I am writing
a letter that fails to speak, my thoughts a hailstorm
of scraped knees and soured milk, the kindness that should
be mother. Time killing takes on a new meaning, my head
a snow globe, each random flake falling back and nothing
ending up where it used to be. Outside the wind is in a crazy
temper, roof slates embrace a new dimension, limbs of trees
relocate into the opaque sea of greenhouse. Its door unhinged.
Yesterday the garden was star salted, a first frost lidding
the earth, like you upstairs, door closed, refusing to communicate,
your grey-haired head suspended in a bowl of clouds. Silence
knew its place then every morning at Sunday speed as you listened
for voices, grasped at silver fish stories, the past escaping
while you slept and our six white boned birches continually
shedding dead leaves.
Tina Cole is a poet and reviewer who has led workshops with both adults and children. In 2020 she won the Yaffle Press Poetry Competition, her second collection, Forged/ Yaffle Press followed in 2021. Her published poems have appeared in U.K. magazines such as, Snake Skin, Brittle Star, Creative Countryside, Poetry Café, Mslexia, Aesthetica, The Guardian newspaper and in many poetry collections. She is currently doing an M.A. in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.