Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- The Commute
- Warming
- Walking Home
- Cycling the Island
- The Garden
- Swallow Hole
- Sylvia Plath's House
- Sixteen Acres
- The Trap
- Praise Song
- View of a Badger on the Heights Road
- The Meaning of Birds
- The Ghost of a Flea
- Nest
- Twinned Sonnets
- Counting the Pennies
- Swan Upping
- The Frozen River
- Marsh Lily
- Praise Song
- To a Dandelion
- Moths
- Sestina for Rain
- A Perfect Mirror
- The Unicorn
- Praise Song
- Relics
- Getting Lost
- Woods in Snow
- Moon Walk
- Halfway Back
- New Moon
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
Swallow Hole
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- The Commute
- Warming
- Walking Home
- Cycling the Island
- The Garden
- Swallow Hole
- Sylvia Plath's House
- Sixteen Acres
- The Trap
- Praise Song
- View of a Badger on the Heights Road
- The Meaning of Birds
- The Ghost of a Flea
- Nest
- Twinned Sonnets
- Counting the Pennies
- Swan Upping
- The Frozen River
- Marsh Lily
- Praise Song
- To a Dandelion
- Moths
- Sestina for Rain
- A Perfect Mirror
- The Unicorn
- Praise Song
- Relics
- Getting Lost
- Woods in Snow
- Moon Walk
- Halfway Back
- New Moon
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
Summary
A dry spell. Gorse starring the rocks
above the ghyll. Far down on a shelf
her body, soft, intact. No more than
three days dead. Maybe she climbed,
nimble as a girl. But her black bob,
glossy in death, is white at the temple
where there is a crack, half-healed,
a row of bilberry beads gone dull.
She died slow. Maybe she fell, leaning
too far in –I've almost done it myself –
smelling depth, darkness, distance;
that breath, that call, that pull.
You have to take care, in such places.
We have ropes, lanterns, body-suits.
On her feet are yellow plastic sandals
over ankle socks greening at the rim,
and there – blue indents on her knees
where she must have knelt,
skin off the back of one hand,
two lines on her neck like tribal marks.
Now I see her, head-down, toppling.
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- Information
- A Perfect Mirror , pp. 8Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018