Judith Willson

Southend

                        something promised
no one can draw it because it never stops moving
words dissolved now in dusty sunlight

 which must be a hot afternoon
                                    a road I am watching unroll
towards this thing no lines can contain
that paces to and fro outside the perimeter    crying out
twisting and clenching its hands
                                                crying out

                                    but what happens is two miles of damp sand
which could not have been deserted that hot day
but are now empty and silent and only sand
stretched tight across earth’s curve
                                                             myself barefoot
perhaps a red plastic bucket in hand
                                                            myself walking barefoot
across the absence of what had been promised

not wanting anything
                                                but this not wanting  

and two miles away
                        a thread is ravelling between silver and grey

                        the slippery edge of a thought
                        which that day had kept its distance

                        leaving everything

                                                perfectly wordless

Judith Willson lives in the Yorkshire Pennines. Her poems have been published in magazines and in the Carcanet anthology New Poetries VI and the Forward Book of Poetry 2019. Her first collection, Crossing the Mirror Line, was published by Carcanet Press in 2017. A second collection, Fleet, exploring absences, migrations and elusive histories, is forthcoming from Carcanet in spring 2021.