Pete Faulkner

Saxon Lady

(From a poem by Helen Faulkner

hair once plaited in a room of smoke

thick twists of bronze

at wrists and throat

she waits in a fold

of the soaked hills

her cloak pulled against

fuzzy baks of mist

dew clings

to a rust coloured dress

wed by tiny bronze serpents

she’ll unclasp tonight

before a screen of painted leather