Naomi Madlock

Wintertide

i.

Skybound: a byroad flush with snowmelt,
and steepening. A world of bracken
gone bronze for winter. The heathland
is stubborn, keeps shrugging off the frost.
Only the hedgerows cling to their silver
shawls, shivering the morning light.
Our old banger clunks into third. All around,
hills bubble like milkshake blown through a straw.
Nearing hawk-height, someone announces
the ocean pouring into view.  

ii.

There is a silence, a stillness, and a readying.
Hand in hand and pale as paper dolls,
we brace. We dig our heels into the sand.
And shedding our obscenities, we rage
against the breaking waves. The fortitude it takes
to coax the breath down from a gasp.
How each swell catches under the arms
and lifts us ever brighter. And how the body
somehow burns with midsummer ferocity,
until it seems there is no skin dividing blood
from brine.

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Naomi Madlock lives in Bristol, UK. Her work is featured or forthcoming in LEON Literary Review, The Madrigal, Spectrum: Poetry Celebrating Identity, Agapanthus Collective and others. At the University of Exeter, she was awarded the Gamini Salgado prize for her dissertation collection She Writes in Golden Ink. Her work draws inspiration from nature to articulate themes of stagnation, resilience and surrender. You can find her on Twitter @naomimadlock