Stone Cold from Harriet Bradshaw by Harriet Bradshaw

Stone Cold

I marvel at “stone cold”
At “dead in the water”
Unfeeling, the reeling of river beds rumbling,
Yet life everywhere!
Among the ruinous fragments of
Moving and moving and going and streaming,
There are bodies, rising up and green
And growing!
A weathered fisherman’s face,
with bright, undulating light on every pore.

Forms in rich fauns and greys gaze over it,
And drop their clothes --flat--
To be baptised in the flow of it,
Exalted and salted,
And those cold stone bones
Are awake and very much alive.

So yes, I am staggered by “stone cold”
Nothing more than a lie once told,
So clear to me they are mis-sold.

• Folk
• alternative folk
• female
• music hall
• singer-songwriter
• songwriter
• Middlesbrough