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Zoe Brooks worked with disadvantaged inner-city communities before returning to her native Gloucestershire. ‘Fool’s Paradise’ won best poetry ebook EPIC 2013 awards. Collection ‘Owl Unbound’ (IDP) published 2020. Director at Cheltenham Poetry Festival.
My grandfather and uncle
both returned to the earth
with untimely haste.
Although they worked it,
broke its back
for snow to bite into,
dragged sedge from ditches,
clawed back
lambs from snowheaps,
they did not inherit it,
unless it was
in the length and width
of a man’s form.
And it claimed them
early,
reaching up through the chest,
pain filling the arms,
which had gathered harvests.
And still they loved it
and still they cursed
on cold wet mornings,
as it worked
like ringworm into their hands.
In death
they shall inherit the earth.
Until this time
they have been living
on borrowed land.
Poem published in Owl Unbound,2020, Indigo Dreams Publishing
Publications:
Owl Unbound, 2020, Indigo Dreams Publishing, ISBN 978-1-912876-36-5
Fool’s Paradise, 2012, White Fox Books, ISBN 978-09572341-0-9
Grandchildren of Albion, anthology, New Departures, ISBN 978-0902689145
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
