“Uplift”

It’s tea-time on the solstice when
the shelving winter sun alights exactly
on the pitch to catch my eye –

I, havering at my dining-writing table,
the sun, reflecting on a row of memoir
and picking out Wild Swans.

I’ve learned to trick the darkest mornings,
waking to the gentle pulsing wind
Adagio from Mozart’s Gran Partita –

bassoon, horn, oboe, clarinet, each
emerging in its turn to lead
the line, interleaving beat by

syncopated beat the skeins of melody
that stretch to warm and loose
my spine. They bear me up. I dawn.

Clare Bryden “Uplift”, Thimble Literary Magazine, Issue 8.1, 3 July 2025.