She asked for no family plot,
just to become a part
of the hill they could see
from their kitchen,
under the seven pines
where they carved their names
when she and Dad
first came to the village.
So he carried the jar
across the lane, climbed
the padlocked five bar gate,
stumbled up to the copse
through rough grass,
pine cones,
sheep droppings.
Afterwards
there was no stone
or newly planted sapling,
just the wind
through needled twigs,
barbed wire all along
the top of the gate,
and the trespass
that made the place theirs.
© Alex Josephy
Picture 12947166, painting by Van Gogh, 1887, image copyright Mary Evans / Pictures Now Collection
Alex Josephy lives in Rye, East Sussex, and sometimes in Italy. She has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and has worked as a teacher and university lecturer and as an NHS education adviser. Her most recent collection is Again Behold the Stars, a Cinnamon Press pamphlet award winner, 2023. Other work includes Naked Since Faversham (Pindrop Press, 2020), White Roads (Paekakariki Press, 2018), and Other Blackbirds (Cinnamon Press, 2016). Her poems have won the McLellan and Battered Moons prizes, and have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK, Italy and India. You can find out more on her website: www.alexjosephy.net
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