It’s summer solstice hottest longest day in June and the coldest whitest snowdrop flowers in the empty garden bed under Olivia’s window next the coal shed where the puppies lightly snore dreaming of flying bones and kittens unravelling wool. There’s a nip in the skittish air, a distinct rip in the skin of light and shadows are chasing silhouettes into the darkest bedroom corner. Today’s postcard has just fallen on the mat. Up on the island beside the cottage - remember where harebells once carpeted our field - the rowan will soon send out the reddest berries prescient of her winter runes.
Julie Sampson’s poetry is widely published. She edited Mary Lady Chudleigh; Selected Poems, 2009 (Shearsman Books); her collectionsare Tessitura(Shearsman Books, 2014) and It Was When It Was When It Was (Dempsey & Windle, 2018 ). She received an ‘honourable mention’ in the Survision James Tate Memorial Prize, in 2021. Her main website is at JulieSampson.
Amethyst Review 