Ann Pilling

One Christmas hangs in memory like lamps

in a deep wood, the year the village band

chugged up our hill in an old van and set up

over the road in a gateway. Their forest green

jackets were snibbed with silver, cornets and tubas

slicing the dark like moons, and what looked like flowers,

white flowers blooming in winter, turned out to be sheep

jockeying for position as the word got round.

Later I went out for coal and heard, floating up from Keld,

Away in a Manger, misty on the night air.

The sheep hadn’t budged from the gate but the flock had spread

a great wing over the fell as it stood there listening,

stone-still, waiting for the next move.

Ann Pilling

Snow light is big, like sea light, you know

something has happened, when you were in bed

or dozing in the back of a car. It feels different.

It snowed in this room, the white

of my sheet met the wall’s white, a brilliance

plucked my eyes open and there was

a silence on me that was not familiar

like the wrong coat. It is intense

this quiet of snow

like silence after music.

But already, while I’m still wondering

how it feels to be all white,

to be like swans or angels, the roof opposite

crumples and falls with a thud into the street

setting off fat flakes

that shake themselves from the privets

like a dog just out of the river.

Ann Pilling

I like my new mat with its biblical binding

its broad and undyed braid

such as might be worn by shepherds

and its dark smudges

are serviceable, absorbing mud.

I’m glad of it in this dead time

goodnaturedly receiving coldness

so my bare toes can spread.

This mat’s like sand. Across such wastes

kings came, following their appointed star.

It’s bigger than the old, more like a field, and those dark smudges

are the intensest blue.

In Spring they’ll bud and break

and the whole thing will become flowers

and I’ll gather them and that will be my offering

a posy for  the child that is to come.

Ann Pilling