From Times Online May 10, 2007

Scarberry Hill by Josephine Dickinson

From Silence Fell

Inside the house is silence. We sit and look

across the room. You shift your elbows, smoke

and tap your pipe by turns. I write my words

in my little book. We look across the room,

or read, or meet to talk from time to time.

On Scarberry Hill the shadow under the white cloud spreads

and rolls our way. It's far away. Perhaps

it won't come down this far before it stops –

above the whitewashed house, the tumbling river

washing the valley below. Perhaps we have

to wait until it passes over. Just

a bit of rain, that's all. And when it's past,

the sun will shine again. The windsock pulls

to east. It might yet rain. The moment stays.

As tiny cars are shuttling, changing place

across its darkening pastures, Scarberry Hill

appears to frown. You're shuffling papers round,

I'm writing in my notebook still. It passes.

On Scarberry Hill the blinding streaks of green

flood out, the sky's all sun, we wipe our glasses.

Copyright © 2007 by Josephine Dickinson

Silence Fell is published by Houghton Mifflin at £16.99

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