Poem of the month

selected by David Underdown

Altering the Clocks

By Susan Utting

This is not the time for falling back
to thoughts of the dying of bees,
of fathers, sisters, daughters, held
by a steady thread of prayer, mouthed
or hummed in the heads of unbelievers.

We have passed the danger days,
the anniversaries of the one sure thing
and reached the time to spring forward
into the light of afternoons, their growing
warm, to the tips of green things that will

push up through the mud, we know they will
unfurl themselves, like memories of the dead
they’ll come again; at the altering of clocks
we reach the safe time, move closer to believers.

Susan Utting was born in South London and taught creative writing in Reading, This poem celebrating the shift from winter to summer time is taken from her third collection ‘Fair’s Fair’ published recently by Two Rivers Press.