After Philip Larkin
How can we mend but in days?
They wake us, time and time with each loll
of the sun over the horizon, nudging us
towards the shedding of grudges, saying today,
today might hurt less.
Where can we measure our loss but in days?
The cure administered in durations, half-lives,
the will to survive pierced from foil blister packs,
each capsule a sentence lived out
with the fading of each day’s warmth from the sun.
DR PENNY SHUTT works as a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Edinburgh, and is a kinship carer to her ten-year-old nephew. Her novel was recently shortlisted in the Blue Pencil Agency first novel prize, and one of her poems was highly commended in the Kathryn Bevis memorial prize earlier in the year.