for M.G.

The sky was an abstraction and the moon

peeled open her one blind eye on the huddle

of my back as news of your collapse

scratched from the mobile like a match-

boxed beetle. For a week the hills lay

comatose, cold bones and the thirst for light

in us all. We watched out for leaf burst, a kick-

start for April, chestnuts opening their fists, leaves

spilling like scarves from magicians’ mouths

and the email, how it slid in one night

under the moon’s closed lid with the news

that you had woken, were mended.

Geraldine Mitchell's second poetry collection, Of Birds and Bones, was recently published by Arlen House