Clive McWilliam

The Last Snowball

The women of the village
who fear for the snow

lie awake all winter
listening to the distance thaw.

The night is a dark, undappled hill
that comes to the window

warming in the moon,
till the men who've been sent

to scour for snow
come down in the dawn with a weight,

nestled in a sack
like the heart of the very last hare.

The village is a ring of twisted shawls
as the men hold up the ball

and the women peel it from their hands.
Mouths agape

as though they might eat it,
inhale winter's ache and pray

to be snowbound again,
ravished into corners by its drifts.

Edith and Moth Flight
a short exposure

Edith in the garden
wears the time lapse veil
of a moth in flight.
She's as bright
as a cooling pond at dusk.

The moth spied Edith
coming down from the grove
with the light of one who's seen
where the sun goes
when it leaves the hill.


And here's a photo –
a single breath in Edith's life
when a moth came
to dance round her face
before the night could claim it.

During Ploughing

Another came to light this morning –
a collared urn with a bolus of remains,
tumbled like a skull from the furrows.

I break plough blades and the land each day,
uncover pasts and feel that we live
on a hill made of bones that shift beneath our feet.

I hid the urn at the edge of the wood
and buried the remains with a prayer in the shade –
afraid that my wife might see me.

The road snoops past a mile away
and those with a map come looking but find
nothing here but furrows, rape and sky.

I see a shadow every day –
and struggle with the sun to hide it.

A Horse Dozes

by the cottage, his rump to the door.
There's weeping inside and half-eaten suppers
of butter and spuds, and their skins
soaked in milk still wait for the dog.

A squall has left the island darkened;
a ferry comes in sideways across The Sound,
where a fisherman in his tarry boat
is hauling empty water.

The ferry and the sorrow
come together on the shore;
a wooden box in the hold
has the cried name on the lid.

The road, silky from the harbour
up to one big star, nudges the garden gate.
The horse leans forward, his sleep replaced
by grasses rustling; moon on his face.

After

He let winter in to lock this day
and freeze the scent of the room;
took a cast of the sorrow
that ran through his heart
the way she had run through the door.

How the flowers had leaned
and begged her to stay –
their scent was aftermath's shade.

He ate a rose
and burst his lips with thorns;
the scent of her in his mouth,
the loss of her on his tongue.