Rebecca Gethin: Featured Poet

Stag oak

In the brakes there’s a herd
of trees – tined twigs
pale as antlers in the dimpsey.
Stick-thin legs
on seed-shaped feet
step between fallen leaves
without a rustle.
Leaf-shaped ears twitch
as a small gust brings down
a moult of leaf husks.
A pile of spent bracken
the held breath of a tawny pelt,
a hair’s breadth away
from the globed smoke
of dandelion seed heads
by the thicket.
The owl moon opens its eye.

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Rebecca was born in Yorkshire in 1953. Her first writing success was winning the Wharfedale Natural History Society’s essay competition when she was 10 years old. After turning fifty she decided to try and make up for lost time. Her first poetry collection River is the Plural of Rain was published in 2009 by Oversteps Books. Her first novel Liar Dice is to be published by Cinnamon Press in 2011. A second collection is being hatched and she aims to finish another novel. Currently, she teaches creative writing in a prison.