The Aftermath
Today the moon holds out for a few more seconds
and the nightingales open their beaks wider to sing
and the wasps calibrate more intricate patterns
and the hawk maps new fissures of light
and the wolf barks an invitation
and the beetles bore their galleries into the grain
and the swamp tugs more urgently at the source of the river
and the forest imagines a different story
and the canopy holds itself open for longer
and the rain, when it falls, falls faster than it has ever dared
and the thistles are slick with it from root to spire
and caught in the thick of it, nipped right down
to the quick of it. I wait for the aftermath –
and nothing happens, and nothing happens, and nothing happens.
Tess Jolly has published two pamphlets: Touchpapers (Eyewear) and Thus the Blue Hour Comes (Indigo Dreams). Her first full collection, Breakfast at the Origami Café, was published in 2020 by Blue Diode Press. She lives with her family on the south coast of the UK, where she runs her freelance editing business and facilitates creative writing workshops for children and young people. You can find here here: www.poemsandproofs.co.uk