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Poetry

Hedgehog in Winter

By Paul Brookes
Poetry

Hedgehog in Winter

By Paul Brookes

I sense outside this entwined, closed in tall.
Before the Long Cold I gather tussocks
and twigs together. I have eaten all
I need to see me through this long ice pocked.

I slow tapping inside my chest. I don’t
sleep. Occasionally, I wake to try
a feast of crinkly and soft, or make point
of moving my sodden nest dome to dry,

or if my closed in tall is opened out
to cold, or shifted by burrowing sniffs,
I sort through the thin dead that clatter out
from Above, my paws and spines comb stiff

into shape so wet can’t seep and just warm enough to slow in to await Long Warm.
 
 

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Selected by Raymond HuffmanImage Ashleigh Robertson

Published in Open Arts Forum on .

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Paul Brookes

Paul Brookes

Paul Brookes is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. First play performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull. His chapbooks include debut chapbook: The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). Collections: A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), As Folk Over Yonder (Afterworld Books, 2019). A poetry collaboration with artist Jane Cornwell resulted in "Wonderland in Alice, plus other ways of seeing", (JC Studio Press, 2021). The beginning of the "Ganders" septology, whose other books are: "As Folktaleteller" (ImpSpired, 2022), "These Random Acts of Wildness, (Glass Head Press, 2023), "Othernesses", (JC Studio Press, 2023), Wolf Eye (Red Ceilings Press, 2023), Wolf Eye Territory (ImpSpired, 2024), Ever Striding Edge (Dark Winter Press, 2024). "The Dude Work," (Sherwood Press, 2024). Не has had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and videos of his Self-Isolation sonnet sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does photography commissions.

Recently his work has been broadcast on BBC Radio Sheffield. He does not believe in competitions, but has been nominated for the Rhysling Prize, and thrice for the Pushcart Prize. Recently, guest edited for Setumag "Some British Working Class Poets" for a second year.

He edits The Wombwell Rainbow Interviews and a new Substack webzine, The Starbeck Orion.

https://thewombwellrainbow.wordpress.com

https://substack.com/The Starbeck Orion | Substack

More by Paul Brookes →