The Mist

Andy Price

shows the point of a mother’s elbow

then the wooden spoon

moving like a puppet above the stove.

Perhaps if the door opens some more

it will clear for a bit, like steam

from a bathroom making way for cool

air, and maybe show a grandparent

for a second, their mountainside

of age the dripping sheep-riddled

landscapes that would open up inside

us on the road to Wales,

their deafening inaccessibility, the pin

sharp awe of scree and ledge. A limb

of mist obscuring slopes

might shift us further to a room where

hands are forced to probe and grope

the greasy backs of chairs,

the cold face of a TV set, net curtains

fondling us like terrible ghosts, smells

of coal, paraffin, cabbage, hair,

all caught around the ticking of a clock.

The windows here opaque thick slates

in which the world outside

has been embalmed in starless black,

the fossil dark of some recondite dream

set out in blackboard paint,

of which perhaps a school held hostage

by its distance, lit up like a coloured fish,

is vainly swimming through

a sudden slide of mud and night. This is

the back and edge of mist. If you should

exit through our plain front door,

and turn around, you’d see what we could

never see: a well-kept house, a tidy garden

laid to grass and flowerbeds,

two bowls of porridge cooling on a sill,

a pair of elders leaning back in comfort of

the stove, my mother staring into space.

ANDY PRICE is a writer and visual artist based in the East Midlands UK, where he also lectured in Fine Art. Moving from sculpture and drawing to making poetry seemed a natural response to taking up life on the waterways. He has performed locally and studied with Arvon, Poetry School and Faber Academy.