Thanks to everyone who checked out Damien Donnelly’s ‘Drop in‘ and my review of his ‘Eat the Storms‘. The second in the series is novelist and poet, Patricia Osborne. Here’s Tricia talking about ‘Soulmates‘ from her debut collection, ‘Taxus Baccata‘.

Soulmates  Last survivors, Gog and Magog lean side by side on Tor Hill’s dry plain.   Gnarled trunks, stretched girths, cracks and circles.   Branches creak, royal-yellow catkins kiss, caress.   Magog, shrunk with age, hunches, an old woman.   Gog taller, majestic, sways sideways, brushes Magog’s bough.   Sun burns strong, branches              wilt, scallop-leaves scorch, earth                splits.   A feral flame guzzles Gog’s bark. Skeletal, blistered, bare, he’s grown his last flower.   Magog stoops lower, her branches languish,   crevices become cavities,   she wills her earthly trunk to die   so her                           spirit  …