Basso Continuo
A winter field under fog: ghost-
sheep drift towards the hedgerow
as mist might flow through mist,
kites calling through the borderless white,
the sum of their sobs,
Basso continuo,
folding into a music of sorrow.
Imagine how a melody might rise
to a crystal skyline. Somewhere
in that city a woman stands empty-
handed in the shed light of a pieta.
This is her song.
Nicola Nathan has a degree in English Literature from Oxford University and is both a qualified solicitor and English teacher. Her poems have been published in magazines including Poetry London, The Edinburgh Review, Ambit, Agenda, Wild Court and The High Window. Her pamphlet, Tiny, was published by The Next Review in 2016. Original monologues (co-written with David Harsent) were performed at Chancellors Hall, Senate House, in February 2020, for an event celebrating the musical commissions of patron of the arts, Winaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac. (1865 –1943.) Poems from her sequence, Hekate, were broadcast as part of the Bitesize Prom series in August 2020.