Kathryn Bevis is an emerging poet and educator. She read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and is founder of The Writing School in Winchester. Kathryn hosts a Poetry for Wellbeing project for service users of the charity Mind, funded by Arts Council England. Recent awards include being shortlisted for the Nine Arches Press Primers Scheme, winning first prize in the Poets and Players competition, third prize in the Welshpool Poetry Festival competition, and runner up in the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry.
Devil Day
Our ending happened as a gift. That day
the change blew through us. A shudder-flood
of starlings flung away like iron filings
while we gripped the path, jackets billowing,
hair full sail. Even the features of your face,
grim-set against the wind, threatened
to unmoor. We flattened our feet onto
the track as thorns thrashed into new shapes
against a damaged sky and the coconut scent
of warm gorse faded on the air. At the peak,
great lumps of basalt, torn from the hills
some other devil day, lay hurled about.
The wind whirled in the coves of our ears
to make them into echo chambers,
casting our voices off elsewhere,
sending thought to unspoken places.
All at once, each flailing thing was stilled.
We faced each other. Not a word. We knew.
As you scrambled, separate, down the scree,
the heather foamed, on fire beneath my feet.
Kathryn Bevis