Performed by Val Cole

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POEM:

A Widow’s Hand

If the coast holds ruin
like a pint pouring in,
then this deep dorcha tide
must churn its ruby-black heave
until fragile foam flickers
below giant hogweeds.

And if cliffs are the corpses
the sea keeps beating
upon that sable crag,
then the salt-bleeding
squill must nod their heads
in reverent mourning.

For the hills wear green Crombie,
velvet cloaks,
flowing over flagstones where
drunken bogs soak
our secrets in the peat thru time.
Still, the sacred labor
of Blackface graze
between foxglove spires and the
sloe wolfbane bruised with love
and everything
we thought that couldn’t heal.

But if poison and petal can bloom
from the same damp ground,
and the wind can keen off the Irish Sea,
then I, too, must stand bare in my wreckage
and learn to sing.
My widowed hands comb thru
cold umbels of hemlock,
giving the greenery my ruin so
my ruin will have its green.