On Dartmoor
Grey Wethers
The sky is unwrinkled Persian silk.
Ghostly zips are stitched onto it,
then dissolve, as if the chipped button
of the moon is the only fastening
it requires.
Yarner Woods
In the distance
a mound, the size of a stuffed
carrier bag, shimmers.
Close up
hundreds of ants crackle the leaf litter,
swarm like shoppers during the sales.
Nearby
a green woodpecker cackles.
Haytor Quarry
The ref has called time between bouts.
We take a break from the gale’s tackle,
huddle on boulders under a rowan, watch
squally autumn rain and wind
fight it out alone.
Childe’s Tomb
I can’t be sure whether it was
the light on granite,
my aloneness,
the single violet bloom
clinging to rock, or all of it
that doused me in grief.
Winner of South Brent Poetry Competition
Veronica Aaronson is the co-founder and one of the organisers of the Teignmouth Poetry Festival. Her work has been published widely in literary journals, online and in anthologies and she has won, and been placed in, several competitions. Her first collection Nothing About the Birds Is Ordinary This Morning (Indigo Dreams) has been put forward for the 2020 Laurel Prize. https://www.indigodreams.co.uk/veronica-aaronson/4594449130. One of the poems from the collection was chosen for the Scottish Poetry Library Anthology 2019.
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Abegail Morley 