HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Green Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some shortlisted writers and artists the chance to be published here on the website. Keep an eye on our social media for more great work like this, in the run-up to the release of The Green Issue…
Jeff Phelps
Remembering Snow
Three o’clock on New Year’s Day
and already the clamp of white sky
tightens towards darkness.
Steam is scrawled by the last train
along the valley like a farewell note.
I would do anything to have
this high field covered once more
in the same snow I remember,
to feel it chill my fingers to numbness,
to drag the plastic sledge up, then
let it go with two aboard, heels
slicing and kicking downhill.
Did we really steer safely home
or was it luck and time and gravity
that allowed us safe to the bottom
where we untangled ourselves
from the fence, still laughing
and scoured with snow?
Now I cannot imagine its taste –
bitter and granular,
how it melted inside shirts,
how it arrived that morning
silent and glowing and how
we stood and climbed again,
giving it no mind as if
it would stay forever.
Jeff Phelps’s poems and stories have appeared in many places including HCE’s Blood & Water and Rituals issues. In 2001 he was second prize winner in the Stand open poetry competition with the narrative poem River Passage which was later produced as a CD by Offa’s Press with piano music by Dan Phelps. His novels Painter Man and Box of Tricks were published by the award-winning Tindal Street Press. His poetry pamphlet Wolverhampton Madonna is published by Offa’s Press. He lives in Bridgnorth, Shropshire. Find out more on Jeff’s website.