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
Walking Home
- 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
We walked home this way every school day
for seven years, across the field, the grass
in summer long and wet wetting hems
and cuffs or pulled seeding in our hands;
along the lane, cow parsley greeting us
like old men. There were nettles to be skirted,
an abundance of red and purple admirals
not seen this last wet decade, skip of wren
from wall nook to nook, rare start of hare
or stoat and by July the one white foxglove.
In winter the path frosted with sugared lace
and you marveled at the iced puddles as if
the intricate carvings were a miracle never
before seen. After dark we walked hand
in hand under constellations – Orion,
Cassiopeia, Little Bear – turning in the sky
as the months turned us towards spring;
the moon we saw through full and quarter,
sometimes rising like a huge white balloon,
sometimes ringed with clouds like bruises.
We walked in rain and snow and sun, talked,
talked about what now I don't remember
only see the movement of your hands, two small
kites pulling on the strings of your thoughts.
You were never lost and only ever once afraid:
when I got drunk at New Year and fell
in the ditch. Home was always there, waiting
at the end of the muddy drop to the road.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Perfect Mirror , pp. 3Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018