Light from the North
We mince rub-footed, heels discarded, clink up
the tender stems of drained celebration. Some
still have kisses smirched on their rims - ghosts
of our happiest moment they said would be
invincible, just like this, the longest and most
invincible day. It's why we chose this place,
northernmost, this day, almost nightless - so like
the light we might feel we could live forever.
We wanted our love fused in the simmerdim, the
rings to find our fingers without the darkness of
doubt, but now the blear-eyed guests have left
us to our wreckage and I see there is always an
in-between place, a crossing-over. We sit on the
damp grass in a forest of shadow-fettered flutes
and look out, hands fast, across the water. There
the light limps green and dwindlish to a lode
beyond death, back to its own beginning.
Meg Woodward
Meg Woodward lives in Reading and is Secretary of Reading Writers, the town’s oldest creative writing group.
‘Light from the North evoked the in-between time of Orkney in high summer, when the sun barely sets.’
