Commended: Cassia Stuttard, Minsmere Marshes

Cassia Stuttard

Commended - 2025 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Roots'

Minsmere Marshes

Rooted in Seamus Heaney’s ‘Glanmore Sonnets I’

I

Winter waits for January so I’ve settled

into that self-searching solitude of the sky.

December is almost choked out of breath

and I’m quiet, no sound between my red nose 

and pink lips, pure breath speaking vapour into air.

Our purple-ish trees are half-formed in fog that frees

the need for finer detail and spits out clouds.

II

I love this sky’s stare, its un-care and unspent

colour, battered smooth by winds that raged

against the North Sea and came to haunt

the marsh where winter wears the ground thin. 

A pair of swans plait the water and ripples flee,

scared of this much vulnerability where the open

palm of the sky cleaves trees from the horizon.

III

I will beg the failing light to fix my eye

where meanings can be gleaned from grey sky – 

absolve me in the spaces of silence. 

Please tell me it will never change, this call to calm.

Be still... the wavering wind dithers, then drops

the weight of words on my tongue, heavy consonants

laden with those overly emotional vowels.