Last Frost We tramped the path, last frost, naming sycamore, horse chestnut, ash, elm, silver birch; fingers parted prickly hawthorn, nested delicate-blue and brown-splotched eggs. ‘Soon we’ll hear the blackbird,’ you said. ‘Music which falls from the stars simmering into summer mornings.’ Autumn, we noted each leaf down by the Lee splashed ochre, red and gold, reflecting a hazed sky; maple, oak, sweet chestnut, alder, paper birch. In the still season you said, ‘not many blackbirds survive first flight yet their trill’s so lovely in the twilight.’ And now your atoms have scattered, rearranged, grief is a creature all velvet-plume and dusk. Alison McCrossan
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