Eveline Pye

In Sight

Snow seals me inside, ice white silicone
along windowsills, high drifts at doors.
Sandstone blushes to burnt ochre. Lights 

in other people's windows glow amber
as candles in a pumpkin's eyes.
Halfway up the hill, hazards flashing 

a double decker sits abandoned.
Days held in stasis, muffled in silence,
idleness enforced. Snow slips down 

the roof opposite, hangs at a tipping point,
the scalloped edge of a heavy white drape
defying gravity, gripped by inertia. 

Two shapes move in pale grey air.
Black crows without breasts or bellies
resolve to magpies, walk along the edge 

— an avalanche, a sudden sapience:
the curtain falls, exposing slate,
dark underside to the purity of snow.

Eveline Pye has an international reputation for mathematical and scientific poetry. She was mentored by Liz Lochhead under the Clydebuilt scheme. Her collection, Smoke That Thunders, was published by Mariscat Press (2015) and, from it, the poem ‘Mosi-Oa-Tunya’ was chosen for the 20 Best Scottish Poems of that Year.