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Estelle Price lives in Cheshire but often goes west to the Llŷn Peninsula. She is learning Welsh. Estelle is the winner of the 2021 Welsh Poetry Competition & the 2018 Book of Kells Writing Competition. Her poems are in Poetry Wales & other journals.
(after Derek Mahon)
And why would I not wish, after a drawerful of days
disarrayed with worry, to walk into dusk’s byways
leaving the back gate unlatched? Come night
I’ll say, lead me away from the probing kitchen light
where fear simmers blood-orange like a dying sun
and all the talk is of treatment not yet begun.
Race me across the cropped grass until my mind
is infused with black, the future set free, undefined.
Somewhere in the forest a badger leaves the sett
to forage for her cubs. Inside a child learns the alphabet
his small hand feeding the page with words.
I stand with my back to the door knowing in spite
of everything a mother never loses the urge
to run, for who can tell if everything will be alright?
Poem published in 14 Magazine, Series 2, Issue 2
Publications:
Primers 6, Summer 2022, Nine Arches Press
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
