Poem

Latitude

We’re all bright stars, slowly cooling,
Fixed for now in our constellations.
We are bright stars, cooling slowly,
As we fly into the night.

I once dreamt that the very dust
That makes us up is torn
From stars, rolled up and hurled
Like a roulette ball onto the spinning world
On the morning we are born.
We’re measured not by place, but by time passed.

So I won’t fix my latitude
Though I landed where others before me have lain:
Verulamium, St Albans, AL1.
A city on a hill, that does not shine, has not shone
But is bright sometimes in the glimmer of rain.

No, please forgive a different attitude.
I will fix my longitude, my long-ago-atude,
My ancient songitude,
A line going down.

On hot days, like this, you can lie on the grass
Ear to the ground, and hear the ages’ stories pass:

The ghost of a boy knocked down by a stagecoach
Who still asks shoppers for his mother,
Francis Bacon dying of a chill
Caught dipping a chicken in the lake,
Inventing refrigeration near the inn
Where Oliver Cromwell stabled his horse.

Further down, I hear matins sung
To the hammer of the Northmen on the Abbey door,
And vespers rustling like leaves as monks
Watch over stolen bones of saints.

And a hundred miles down
A barrow raised for a Celtic king
Guarded with dead and the evil eye
With all his people gathered round,
Knowing this is the height of time
And maybe letting out
A gasp of wonder at a summer sky.

We are bright stars, slowly cooling,
Fixed for now in our constellations.
We are bright stars, cooling slowly,
As we fly into the night.

Will Niblett
St Albans, UK

Will lives in St Albans - he is newly married to his wife, whom he met doing voluntary work in Bangladesh. He now works as a civil servant.

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