Poem: 'White Horse Hill'

White Horse Hill

Snowed with ghosts

and the freezing glow

of the sky lowering

its hushing light

the pastures close

cool and cotton

over England’s

buried names.

A grey witness

goes into the land,

inhumes the day

inside its clues.

The trees stretch,

tell the time,

stow the trace

of a distant gun.

In memory of those who fell at the Battle of the Somme, which began 100 years ago today.

'White Horse Hill' was first published in The North 52. It will be included in my forthcoming collection, The Fetch (Nine Arches Press), published October 2016.