​Silver Birch Woman Stares at the Table in the Rain, by Sandra Noel

Birch and Oak, January, by Anna Hutton (UK) contemporary. Used with permission of the artist.

​Silver Birch Woman Stares at the Table in the Rain

Only the rain is outside.
Screeds of it, running
the back windows,
filling cracks in rotting sills.

The table against the wall
is where it’s always been,
her husband’s spirit level wedged
at the back, holding the drooping leaf.

The woman pours memories of her oak
into the tall vase, sees his face
in the dust-shrouded flowers
he once picked for his silver birch.

She recalls the gather of jam-berries
dried out in the everlasting drought;
how they each held a handle of the colander,
their branches working as one.

When she lost the intertwine of her oak,
the silver birch retreated to the bubble
in his spirit level.
She knows he is the rain.

Sandra Noel

Sandra Noel is a poet from Jersey, Channel Islands.  She enjoys writing about the ordinary in unusual ways, nature themes and her passion for sea swimming weaving through many of her poems. Sandra has poems featured online and in print magazines and anthologies. This year she has been longlisted by Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition 2023, highly commended in The Yaffle Press Competition 2023, and commended in Poetry on the Lake’s Haiku competition 2023. Two of her poems are currently on the buses in Guernsey as winners in the Guernsey International Poetry Competition 2022.  Sandra is working on her first collection.

When the Rain Comes, by Jessica Wolfson (UK) 2022