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
Halfway Back
- 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
i.
The day's a beauty, sun on the minted
morning, fresh hint of air from the west.
The climb up Steeple track past the ox-eye
daisies, the piebald pony, the stone lintel
of the tumbled shack takes nothing from you,
nor the sheep path that veers left over rough
ground to the lip, the brow, then the crown
of the hill. Now's the time to sit and draw
in the valley's veined cupola, the next
county's border a raised vernacular
after all those flat vowels.You'd been advised
to cross an unmarked field and cut the walk
a whole arduous mile; razor wire folds
loosely around bog grass and a haze lifts
from the soft ground. But how to do this –
slip past the waymark when you see the farmer
on the road and no convergent distance?
Now you are the girl who folds into a note
and posts herself sky-wards like a white bird.
You keep right and pass a farm where dogs
are set to guard at intervals in separate yards.
Allow now a long down hill, a rough jog
slowing as the road rises to the crossroads,
and although south rolls to a village
you follow the map and set course north
for the plantation. It's midday,water's
low, your pack an extra kilo and lunch
must wait untilyou've placed a wall
between yourself and the curious cattle.
The walls are man-height, and you so small,
until the gate, tightly wrought barbed wire
and sheet iron layers over a nettled ditch.
She's back, the girl who can ride on air
and it's a snitch getting over this.
A cascade of tussocks on a sixty-degree
slope andyou've made it to the creek
where you unlace your boots and sink
your feet into the cool singing waters,
eat at last on the heat of the bank.
Lie down with the land now;you're halfway back.
ii.
We could say that you never left, we could say
so much was lost – what was still to be
achieved, won, admired, loved; we could
imagine you halfway between here and there,
about to set off but, having forgotten something
essential, about to turn back. We could say
you are just out of ear shot, beyond calling
but not quite.
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- Information
- A Perfect Mirror , pp. 50 - 52Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018