Drawing Breath at the National Trust
Her voice carries.
No full stops
she is all conjunctions:
'but' and 'so' and 'yet' and 'and'.
Sixty-five years of catching up to do
chasing herself through unpunctuated sentences.
And then the crows come to pick at crumbs
from the cheese scone taken an age to eat,
minor mouthfuls when she paused
offering hair-line cracks for her companion’s
feeble wedge of unfinished phrases.
After she has finally been overwhelmed
the crows will still be there
hopping into the silent full stop
of her no longer drawing breath.
Ian Gouge - Writer 