where emily walked

where emily walked

the cholera cobbles

clamour less,

than then

infants make stronger adult shapes,

resilience fragile

and untested

words no longer

course from water,

are not windswept

nor chiselled

from mossy stone

caught instead

in caged throats,

muffled by electronics

sky signs

and starry paths

have become wooden,

cleansed for each new June

and the coaches come

and the coaches go,

crumpled cans, waxy wrappers

rupture the snowdrops

an influence

made from history and ink,

pauses high hillside

bereft in the half-light

as silence forms a fathom,

engulfed by a twilight

trapped in a raging blink