Well, others have stayed the distance with a small stone a day, and very lovely they have been too. I haven’t quite managed it, or at least I haven’t always written anything I want to share, which is not quite the same… here’s one from a couple of days ago.
She’s a menhir on the platform, unmoved
by the banshee shrieking of wheel on rail.
Her daughter leans her good-dog weight,
little thumb-pot eye-sockets filling
with the ground sound caterwaul.
All our faces clenches, temple to teeth,
foreheads gripped between our eyebrows,
folded paper fans in the clutch of claws.
Then the tunnel smooths and soothes
the demonic harmonics, so I unwinch –
But her frown remains, hung in midair
on an invisible nail driven halfway
from here to some otherwhere.
Kirsten Luckins 