Erasing Ways
On that September day
walking back along the tracks
she found her way fated to cross a life-path
with the girl she used to know those long-times ago
and the girl told her she
was still walking there
where they used to meet up
…on the red ridge
above the town low down in the valley –
she remarked that though she still loved
the place she found she could no longer do
as she wanted and walk the ways
of erased memory-lanes, how
they evaded her – though she could still skirt around,
wander beside overgrown paths, select
mind’s eye’s richest hued silks from Martin’s drapers,
stitch imaginary cross-kisses over her canvas bag, chain-
dreamwork its pockets, then
lug it up the hill
…..to home –
could plash in a mirage of puddles,
watch herself reflect a climb
on the lowest branches
of blossoming apple-tree,
could even stare at the
wide-angled view cast in moor’s grey distance
…..before her
Later, when the longest winter arrives
she’ll roll the snow-ball
over,
………..over and ac-
ross the white-out of the garden grove,
give it a coal-eye.
She’ll scroll the quietening parchment
of her emptying days.
Thawing,
it’ll begin
to drip its script
across, ac-
ross and over
grass
before another
…big
fall and blizzards start over again.
Her trail will become invisible,
in-accessible, re-
…erased,
beneath the white-page writing
of the longing mystic life.
In recent years Julie Sampson‘s poetry has appeared in a variety of magazines, including Shearsman, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Journal, Amaryllis Poetry, The Algebra of Owls, Molly Bloom, The Poetry Shed, The Lake, Amethyst Review, Poetry Space and Pulsar. Shearsman published her edition of Mary Lady Chudleigh; Selected Poems, in 2009 and a full collection, Tessitura, in 2014. A non-fiction manuscript was short-listed for The Impress Prize, in 2015 and a pamphlet, It Was When It Was When It Was, was published by Dempsey and Windle, March 2018.
Amethyst Review 