Winter
The view of the field from my kitchen
over to the North York moors is not as green
since you left with your carpenter’s awl.
You’re still in the village, up ladders,
down cellars, sawing cupboard doors
for other women. The oaks have shaken the leaves
from their hair. I blinked. Now you’re building
thirty-four houses in the meadow
beside mine. I’ve changed each pane
to frosted glass which distorts any thought
of you. So although the cataract in the glass
means I’ll no longer see the edge
of each leaf in detail on the trees
that remain in the orchard next door
when summer finally arrives, at least
the blur of walls will force me to focus
on the needle of my grandmother’s
sewing machine. As I sit in the shadow
of the years she stood at a spinning mule
up north, all the factory windows frosted
like permanent winter, I’ll remember
this was the lens through which she saw
the stream washing the celandines
in the woods of the valley at Styal.
