The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

The Friday Poem on 25th June 2O21

Clare Best’s poem ‘beyond the gate’ is part memorial, part lament for Sarah Everard, and for all the other women attacked while walking alone. Best walks us beyond the safety of home through trees which become the women themselves – all colours, all ages, all sizes, some “with fruit”, scarred and stripped. The spacing between words gives a sense of fragmentation, and the repetition of ‘with us’, ‘out here’, and ‘we are walking’ creates a feeling of relentlessness and inevitability. It’s a long journey home.

beyond the gate

in memory of Sarah Everard
and all the others

scots pine and resin-scented air
out here
giant oak     left of the path
we are walking

sycamore     in sun     in shade
holly crowding ragged elder

sweet chestnut     spruce fir    douglas fir
with us
field maple     half-uprooted beech
out here     walking

sorbus domestica     the service tree
and elm     rare elm

blackthorn     black with sloes
with us     out here
hawthorn     hazel     leaning ash
and we are walking

ivy     juniper     cherry     poplar
copper beech and twisted willow

so many hornbeam     so many birch
out here
stripped leafless by fine sleet
as we are     walking

ranks of cypress     sapling larch
branches creaking high above

wild plum and wild pear
we are     we are
scarred     black-leafed     still with fruit
walking     walking

Clare Best is the author of a prose memoir The Missing List (Linen Press, 2018) and six volumes of poetry, the most recent of which is Each Other (Waterloo, 2019). A new pamphlet, End of Season, is published with Coast to Coast to Coast in 2021. Clare has often worked with visual artists and is currently a Fellow at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama where she is collaborating on operas and other vocal projects. She lives on the edge of Tunstall Forest, near the Suffolk coast. Clare Best’s website is here

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