Anne Stewart is the founder and editor of poetry p f – www.poetrypf.co.uk – a growing showcase of today’s poets, and is one of the “Ten Hallam Poets” (anthology, Mews Press) selected from Sheffield Hallam University’s MA in Creative Writing. Her website is at www.annestewart.me.uk

And the Boat upon the Water

Why do you come to me in dreams, Katerina?
In dreams of your mother dying?

Why do my sisters bustle so, with kitchen things,
so absently, forgetful of their children?

What has been lost, Katerina,
that brings such people back to me?

I sense a coming dark, my love,
as though a dark friend comes for me.

Sleep may come and dreams may come
and their reasons come no clearer.

Yet why do I hear, in those busy dreams,
the slip of a boat to water?

At home, the salmon claw, Katerina,
claw upstream, through day and night.

Come to me here and now, Katerina,
in the fireflies’ dying light.

Anne Stewart

First published in Ten Hallam Poets (eds Steven Earnshaw, E A Markham & Sean O’Brien, 2005) Mews Press, and available from poetry p f online