Veronica Aaronson: a poem

Death came so close

it grazed my skin

magicked my shoulder blades to wings

and I flew to where I couldn't say but in

the few moments I had gone the Earth

re-birthed itself became luminous

not only the obvious: animals trees flowers

but slug slime a half-eaten rat and a chipped peg

clipped to a washing line; the moon yellowed brighter

and musicked its journey across the sky

and such beauty was there that for days

I wept on waking as I lifted milk from the fridge

topped and tailed beans or cleaned the kitchen floor

but just as aftershocks subside little by little

the moon paled and silenced its song

even the trees and the bright birds lost their shine

and all that was left was this longing of mine.

Veronica Aaronson’s first collection Nothing About the Birds Is Ordinary This Morning (2018 Indigo Dreams) was put forward for the 2020 Laurel Prize. One of the poems from the collection was chosen for the Scottish Poetry Library’s Best Scottish Poems Anthology 2019. One of the poems from her second collection Emily’s Mothers (Dempsey and Windle, 2020) was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem in 2019. Her pamphlet Telling Tales has just been published by 4Word Press.