• Bernadette Hall

 

it’s a washed out sort of day

the cloudy undercarriage of morning / of mourning

                  and it’s all hands to the pump

 

we’ve got to move the heavy

Elizabethan church pew out of the broken chapel

                  into the long grass 

 

it’s a nice piece of work even though the wood

is cracking up, little bits gouged out of it by insects,

                    by tiny hammers of rain

 

did you see the tender packaging of green heart-shaped

tree-seeds? they might sustain us

                   or they might sustain our souls

                 

                  but hey lack-a-day,

that’s another whole area that’s up for discussion

(the souls I mean) as long as you listen and don’t start shouting