Threshold, by Mary Gilonne

Cape Cod Evening, by Edward Hopper (USA) 1939

Threshold     

Whether to leave now while dry evening light whiffles grass to flax,
or wait until creeping trees smother them slowly with untold dark.

The stone is the weight of his curved hand, a decision too heavy
to throw. His dog swithers between elsewhere and here, suspended

hesitation. Look how she looms against the house, a cross-armed 
dourness dressed in township green, cumbersome with questions. 

Tight-lipped brooding draws us to her face, she knows the debtor’s score. 
See how one leg advances yet her stock-still body holds her waiting words.

Walls, blind windows, empty door. He sits upon the step in singlet, pants, 
indecisions in white and black, staying that listless flex of sun-burned arm 

before his final thought is formed.  Whether to leave or stay depends on this 
desperate drought of homestead air, on the balance of one bone-hard stone. 

Mary Gilonne

Mary is a translator living in France for many years but originally from Devon, U.K. She has won the Wenlock, Segora, Wirral and Sentinel prizes, and been placed or commended in many others. Her work can be read in Magma, Antiphon, Spontaneity, Snakeskin, Unbroken, Fenland Review, The Curlew etc., and in several anthologies. Her pamphlet  Incidentals is published by 4Word Press.