Guest Poem by Regi Claire

Swiss-born, Edinburgh-based Regi Claire won the Mslexia / PBS Women’s Poetry Competition 2019 and was a finalist for the Forward Prizes 2020 (Best Single Poem) and the Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition 2021. Her poems have appeared in Acumen, Ambit, Antigonish Review, Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021, Best Scottish Poems 2021, Forward Book of Poetry, Mslexia, New European, Poetry Birmingham, Rialto, Southword, Under the Radar, Thi Wurd and others. (PhotoCredit Dawn Marie Jones, Stoyanov & Jones)

When it is Time

The beeches were the last to leave. Too stately maybe
or too full of themselves they stayed on, blazed more
fiercely copper in the sun, soaked up dusk until they inked
to darkness. Then they threw their arms around the stars,
called them theirs, their one and only.

I stand beneath their night, stand between it and
my own, and imagine pinheads of glitter swaying above me.
In time, when I myself begin to sway as I know I must,
I shall search for seeds, even the splinter of a
single star, to hurl into the empty skies.