The next to respond to our In From The Cold callout for creative wintry submissions, here is brilliant poet and previous First Draft performer Ciarán Hodgers, with his poem ‘Visiting’.
Visiting
Ciarán Hodgers
We go visiting,
Peeling ourselves from fresh fleece
And brave beyond the threshold.
We do the rounds of faces,
Places we’re meant to see, be.
For the day that’s in it;
We visit whisky wrinkled aunts
Around log fires and thirty year old memories,
Aging children,
Skirting what’s slipped down telephone wires
And a shadow, of unseen;
The man whose mind defies his body’s failure,
And the son dealing with the death of them both.
Now we’re driving
Through predusk puddles
And someone should probably announce we’ve arrived,
Yet we’re silent.
We’d rather keep driving,
But there’s one house left,
Empty vases by the doorsteps
And rooms filled with pebbles
Swept into zen gardens six foot tall.
We give our minutes
But to say we come here to grieve would be a lie.
We cry elsewhere.
We attest,
To time lapse until it catches
And we breathe through reflections of headstones
When others come to tell us the time.
Jakub Schikaneder – All Souls Day
Other bits
Submit your own wintry story, poem, song or artwork for our In From The Cold callout before the end of January, and we’ll publish it on our blog
Read our other responses so far
Join us for our next event, After Dark, on Monday 15 February
Find out more about Ciarán Hodgers over on his blog
Follow Ciarán and First Draft on twitter
