Threshold

Jane Clarke

Her sisters tried to dissuade her,

listed all she would miss. Her mother

asked her to wait till she was twenty

at least. In the last few weeks

the house grew quiet

as if upstairs someone lay dying.

The day before leaving she walked

with her father down to the river

where it wove around

small wooded islands and over the weir.

A heron stood silent in the reed beds.

Chiffchaff and blackcaps flitted

through alder while a wisp of snipe

zigzagged up from sedge.

If you can bear not to see this

next spring, and all the springs

God gives us, then daughter,

I give you my blessing.

Irish poet, JANE CLARKE, has published three collections with Bloodaxe Books. Her third collection A Change in the Air was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2023. She edited Windfall: Irish Nature Poems to Inspire and Connect (Hachette Books Ireland, 2023).