Into the goldfinch light

I have a dream so close it seems
Almost grown within my past,
Of a Southern country lane in St Michael’s Summer,
The leaf shadows fluttering in the goldfinch light,
Hooves closing under my ribcage gleaming
Over the far-flying fields.

I will never see perhaps that place, those pale wheat wings, or a thousand other stillnesses that are still
Nested within me.
But on a drim and greary night, we will wind ourselves out of the shab boxes

And I will take you with me, my love,
Through fluttering lanes and Southern shadows
Into the goldfinch light.

Sage Willow

I go up into the hills I wish to be
Alone
I follow the sun as the sun follows
The snake trails in the sea
I love you as you have loved
Noone but me

Cry before cataclysmic hurtling

The rosebay willowherb shakes, whimpers like a little dog

Pools pound between rocks and stones

And when this place has seeped away
Leaving Görlitzer’s grime sedimenting my bewildered toes

I think of my rowan, my sage willow, under whom water ribbons
Clatter of the hunted falls
Departing
Dank rapturous, screened
As my own skeined thoughts and loves must ever be.

—Sarah Gait

In our ECO LIT series, Red Canary Magazine dedicates space for established writers and emerging voices to imagine better ways of being.