Four a.m.
Hunting for a dairy farm
somewhere up there, where
the windmills scrape the sky,
red kite hover.
Headlights scatter, lose themselves,
fog rolls down the windscreen,
trees lurch from the shadows.
Nothing stirs. Only a dog barking at a fox
and ghosts.
Signs summon me to unreadable villages.
Gaps in the hedge inch by
sheep whispering at
stubs of grass crooked with cold.
Pale light filters around the edges of blinds,
sidles nervously through an open door.
A work hardened hand clutches mine.
‘Diolch am ddod bach.
It's really bad this time.’
From The Hippocrates Prize 2015: The Winning and Commended Poems, selected by T Dalrymple, R Gross, F Oyebode and S Rae, eds MW Hulse & DRJ Singer. The Hippocrates Press, 2015. © Ann Lilian Jay. Reprinted with permission.
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