No Waters More Clear by Susan Taylor

 

 


 

Susan Taylor began writing in her teens in the idyllic setting of her family farm in the Lincolnshire Wolds – Tennyson country. An ex-shepherd, she has become rather a turncoat now, with much sympathy for the plight of the wild wolf. She has seven published poetry collections, including Temporal Bones, published by Oversteps Books in July 2016.

Susan is a keen performer of her poetry and has developed and toured many collaborative poetry shows, including La Loba – Enchanting the Wild and The Weather House, which appeared as an Indigo Dreams Poetry Pamphlet in 2017.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Waters More Clear

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am stretched out in a bed of grief.

Green as watercress, it is.

I can feel the love of ones that love me

supporting me all around,

 

holding me,

like the water beneath the fronds

flowing through them constantly.

So here I am

 

able to shed these soft word seeds

among dark curling leaves of pain,

so fresh and tender that I begin

to understand more

 

the nature of bereavement. It is a spring

renewing itself from deep down.

The worst of losses has come into my life:

the loss of a child, loved and so loving,

 

young and so strong. He was taken

on impact by a freakish hurling force,

a race against time

in some stranger’s life.

 

Let there be no more race against time

for me. Time drifts on a bed of watercress.

There’s no waters more clear than here

in the quietest part of the stream

 

where cresses grow. During days

when I am stretched out floating,

 too stricken for tears, these words

shed my freshwater grief.

 

 

Susan Taylor

 

 

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