Retreat
by Tim Rich
I wanted to live quietly
in a white stone cottage
far down an unhelpful track
that twists and dips low
into old black woods so
unbidden guests will turn
back on themselves, not
getting to where the way
long after it leaves the map
swerves hard to reveal
a meadow by the reach
of a fast thick river and
nearby softly in sunlight sits
the place I’d wake each day
to make a fire, cook slowly, watch
smoke drifting from a low roof
over the in-love-with-itself torrent
lined with bright bushes sagging
under honeyberries, buckthorns
then beyond to maybe-glimpses
deer moving through poppies? yet
closer a weathered table for mending
writing, reading until the light
is right only for shrews, owls
when comes the moss tread
of the shadowless ponies who
half-ghost through to lap
from the pail I leave
by the well, while
unlit inside I wonder if
it is time to sleep
but what sleepwould I have falleninto there, andwhat dreams?
Tim Rich lives and writes in Hastings, England. Most recently, his poems have appeared in the book Dark Angels: Three Contemporary Poets (Paekakariki Press, London), at the Bloomsbury Festival, and in the 2024 Connections project with writers’ group 26 and the Barbican Centre. He has also guested on poetry podcasts such as Night Light with Tom Snarsky and Eat the Storms. Tim shares poems and lo-fi photographs on Instagram @timrichphotographs.