The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Runner-up - Pat Winslow

Pat Winslow worked for twelve years as an actor and left the theatre in 1987 to take up writing. Her poetry collections include Skin & Dust (Blinking Eye), The Girl in the Iron Lung (Crocus), the Fact of an Eye (Amazing Colossal) and Harvest (Jackson’s Arm). Pat’s fiction has won competitions and appears in anthologies and magazines. She’s currently working on a short story collection. Dreaming of Walls Repeating Themselves is due to be published by Templar Poetry in October.

The Boot at Barnard’s Gate

There was a time, a day like this, when
the tree was just planted and the late sun

buttered a tub of marigolds. There was a day
and all they heard were cows and the hay

being got in, the call of a far off marsh tit.
Each man wore a dark blue jacket.

Some had bicycle clips but most had tucked
their trousers in their socks. A day of heat

and ticking insects. They stretched their toes
inside their boots and leant their elbows

on the bar. Each man watched his beer
foam up inside the glass. Already, they were

dreaming it in their mouths, cool and bitter.
Autumn yeast, fallen fruit and fresh leaf litter.

No plane from Brize Norton, no trailing
screams, no slur of traffic, this maiming

swish, this hiss, this sound we often take
for silence. You could sing and crack a joke,

hear the matches scrape, smell the Woodbines,
ride home hands-free along the unlit lanes.