It is hard to imagine anything new

It is hard to imagine anything new: outside
a low sky prints off another version of itself
and skin and lung and days and memory won’t
be wrestled into the back of my wardrobe –

unfinished lists build nests in high trees, busy
as crows who, in dreams, draw black crying
circles and then are gone. Spreadsheets lie empty –
crumpled sheets, resolutions are written only

in water. It is best to reach back, wear January
like my mother’s coat, search in its pockets for
hankies, train tickets with the date smudged
like a kiss, for mistakes in the lining’s stitches

I can feel against my fingertips, ward off days
hard as salt, so I can know that after this old
cold that narrows each bone, the relics of spring
will come and kiss my hand again, a blessing.

From Northern Ireland, Olga Dermott-Bond lives in Warwickshire. A former Warwick Poet Laureate, she has been commissioned to write for Poetry on Loan and has had poetry and flash fiction published in a range of magazines, including Rattle, Paper Swans Press, Magma, and Ink Sweat & Tears. In 2018 she was shortlisted for The Poetry Society’s Primers IV publishing prize, and one of the winners of the BBC Proms Poetry Competition. Olga works a teacher and has two daughters.

Read more of Olga here.