Poem of the Month

Women Exhibited

Here are the women,

written in the earth.

A fan of bones; vertebrae like corks,

their message delicately

inscribed by herringbone fingers.

*

At Kingshill North her knees are bent tenderly to chest.

A warm slope and a red pot, honouring

a tooth-sore, bronze-age traveller.

And three thousand years away

in the next gallery,

her Anglo-Saxon sister

leaves traces of her

colours fossilised

in the corrosion

of metal objects.

*

Their speaking bones are whispering to us.

*

I see you.

I am listening,

you buried

and unburied

women.

Sophie Livingston