Molly Knox

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for gran

and so I got startled thinking they introduced wolves but it turned out to just be his dog. i think they’re gonna introduce wolves. up north. it’s yet to be approved. have to get permission from the crofters, the farmers, the great hills too. do you think it’s better now the clouds have come over?

       if we glare long enough into the patterns on beech trees, the answer will reveal itself. i’d forgotten how beech trees are. sometimes these things keep to themselves. hiding in the edges of grass with mice in wee houses. i read they’re saying tasmanian devils are dying out. i keep thinking they can claw it back. because somehow i keep reading about them.

see, we are used to counting the birds on the garden fence. we used to feed the imaginary chickens, lost your pram in the long grass. sparrows, tits, sometimes crows. those won’t be going anywhere,

surely. what do you bet we get home before the rain comes on? sorry, had to look up the difference between a crow and a whatsyoucallit recently. found out I’d gotten it all wound wrong. like trying to do a cardy up in the wind. counting foxglove leaves alphabetically. they’re saying you don’t know the difference between daffodils and poppyseeds. i can hear it now. if you listen closely enough you can tell the beech tree is hanging to the banking and no more. it’s humming between the light between the leaves: between us. in the end, I think that’s the trouble, with what comes next.

not enough hear it. the road will go down when the winter comes.

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Molly Knox is a recent Music graduate of Durham University. She is starting her MA at Durham in Ethnomusicology this autumn. They are a Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net nominee. Their work can be read in The Braag, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and Wrong Directions.