The Suspended World
I have seen those who knew the war,
walking together like Old Testament prophets.
I have seen a lone white haired man lifting dumb bells
in a meadow to prove something to himself.
I have seen in nod and smile, a new courtesy
announcing suddenly, we are postulants.
I have heard the wind through the woods
and an early bumblebee that does not care.
And two larks rising over fields
beside the road full of cars going
to the ghost city. The larks reminded me
of those ascending the cliffs of Dover in 1914
Vaughan Williams knew
The dog still wild, wades down the river
trying to chase deer. A lift of heart.
Now there is just the quiet of our rooms,
the shadows and the clock
at different times of day.
A life simplified, to moving, breathing,
if we can
Hoping we are being told the truth
under the innocent flowering
of the cherry blossom trees.
At night the pillows soft against the dark.
are a presence, a scarf of ordinary things.
As others who have loved and lost,
been ill for a long time, this is a place
beyond the suspended world.
Sunlight outside the window
and memory, like the early speedwell
I saw, tiny, blue, at the paths edge,
where nothing was being said.
Clare Crossman has published three collections of poetry and is working on a fourth to be published later this year by Shoestring Press. She recently collaborated with the filmmaker James Murray white on waterlight, a film about a chalk stream in Cambridgeshire where she lives.
