She rises at dawn, chilled
by the lost embrace
of her sleeping pills, brushes
summer's blown ashes
with the shuffle of footsteps
on old stone floors.
She thaws her hands
around a coffee cup,
sits at her desk,
******** Ariel arrowed from
yesterday's tide hoof-printing
ocean waves jetting barnacles
telephone wires a man's black boot
routing them through
cold English mornings,
a gold Sheaffer pen.
Words seep
across the page,
trail toxins of grief.
Light edges
between churchyard yews,
fingertips the curtains.
A thumb's worth
of breast-milk
stains her nightgown.
May 9, 2016
May 9, 2016 at 1:15 PM UTC
She rises at dawn, chilled
by the lost embrace
of her sleeping pills, brushes
summer's blown ashes
with the shuffle of footsteps
on old stone floors.
She thaws her hands
around a coffee cup,
sits at her desk,
******** Ariel arrowed from
yesterday's tide hoof-printing
ocean waves jetting barnacles
telephone wires a man's black boot
routing them through
cold English mornings,
a gold Sheaffer pen.
Words seep
across the page,
trail toxins of grief.
Light edges
between churchyard yews,
fingertips the curtains.
A thumb's worth
of breast-milk
stains her nightgown.
After Ted Hughes left, Sylvia was alone in the large manor house with their children Frieda and Nicholas. She wrote some of her most well-known poems between daybreak and when her children woke a few hours later.
