For the Winter

Go north for the winter. Drive to the dark.
Meet it mid-way, and drawing your arms
wide, shine a light on your evergreen veins,
the anti-freeze sap of your holly-bound heart:

prove you are ready. Look at it this way,
Death and your dead are as feet on your road
already pounding towards you, and you
must live with their presence, absence, cold,

and might as well start as you will have to go.
The sharp northern sky with its oracle stars
and crystal-ball moon will soon shepherd you home.
The journey's not long, you've made it this far

and turning your back and your mind against winter
won't bring back the summer or call forward spring.
Lean to the green in the black lake and mountains,
learn to see light where the greyness creeps in,

remember the red of the warning-sun rising
behind death, and from death, is where we all start.
An end is an end, but holds a beginning
within in. Go north. Drive to the dark.

Polly Atkin
From Bone Song, (Aussteiger Publications 2008).

More poems by Polly Atkin:

The Magician
Walking London

Polly Atkin was born in Nottingham and is now based in Cumbria. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway in London and came to the Wordsworth Trust as a volunteer. She is currently researching the construction of meaning around Dove Cottage for a PhD at the University of Lancaster.

Her poem Seven Nights of Uncreation was commissioned by Arts Council England as the twelfth in a series commemorating the bicentenary of the Abolition of The Slave Trade Act. Her pamphlet, Bone Song was published in June by Aussteiger Publications.