on a January morning
my heart climbs the 199 steps,
turns, takes a breath, and for seconds
is terraces and roof-tops, the swelling North Sea.
Inside St. Mary’s Church, my heart
reads a notice,
Do not ask the staff where the grave
of Dracula is because there isn’t one
and my heart smiles,
moving very slowly between pews,
looking for, but not finding,
a carved effigy of itself.
Instead, an offering and a candle
that stays lit even in the day’s sudden gusts
which blow inside and outside
my heart, to the abbey
where it settles at last,
in front of a statue of St Hild.
© Pam Thompson
Picture 10100950, photograph by Roger Mayne, circa 1960s, image copyright Mary Evans / Roger Mayne Archive
Pam Thompson is a poet, educator and writing tutor based in Leicester. She has been published in The Rialto, Mslexia, The North, Butcher’s Dog, Poetry Salzburg, The Interpreter’s House and Under the Radar among others. Her collections include The Japan Quiz (Redbeck Press, 2009) and Show Date and Time (Smith|Doorstop, 2006). Pam has a PhD in Creative Writing and her second collection, Strange Fashion, was recently published by Pindrop Press. Pam is a 2019 Hawthornden Fellow.
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