WHERE I LIVE
MORELLE SMITH
Image courtesy of Pixabay
Where I Live (March 14, 2022)
These days are loud as wooden cartwheels
over cobbles, over rutted rough ground,
they thud and thump their way
across the landscape of the day.
Perhaps these loud noises are the sounds
of past colliding with the present,
banging and thudding through
the landscape of the day.
Image by Morelle Smith
In calm moments memories blister
the rockpool surface of recall:
The Maidan Memorial in Kyiv,
autumnal stillness in Ostroh,
the wide blue sky, the flat plain,
and sunlight catches on a distant dome,
golden as a rooster’s comb on fire.
Bonfire scents of burning leaves,
the ragged clumps of mistletoe
hanging from trees.
Image by Morelle Smith
Usually, where I live is very quiet,
but today’s strong wind booms
and crashes through the forest
and an open gate somewhere
bangs and pauses, slams again.
I hear an urgent sound above me
and look up – two geese are flying fast
and sounding the alarm,
two blades severing the silk of sky.
No, nothing much happens here,
Just the thud and thump and crack
of passing time.
Morelle Smith writes poetry, fiction, non-fiction and journalism. She has worked in the Balkans as English teacher and aid worker. She has enjoyed several Writers Residencies in France, Switzerland, Croatia and Serbia. She has won awards and prizes for her poetry (Audience Award, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2014) and prose (Autumn Voices, UK, 2017) and her work has been translated into several languages including French, German, Albanian, Romanian, Croatian, and Bulgarian.
Image by Vassil Tanev
Morelle currently collaborates with European writers, translating and editing their work. Her most recent books are Shaping the Water Path (poetry collection, diehard, UK, 2017) and The Midnight Man (bi-lingual novella, Biblioteca Universalis, Bucharest, 2018). The Buoyancy of the Craft, about Swiss writer and traveller, Annemarie Schwarzenbach, was published in 2021 by Diehard Press.
Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/morellesullivan
To find out more about her work, visit: https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/authors/morelle-smith
