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