A poem on Sunday: ‘Dust’ by Sarah Persson

As part of the Creative Writing M.A I took at Swansea University, I wrote poetry about family life and folklore in both Sweden and Wales.

The family home there is very rural, but only once have I ever seen an Elk. They are shy creatures, and as a noisy family, I expect we scare them off.

The idea for the poem came at a poetry workshop at the Seren Poetry festival, where one memory should open from another.

The Kidwelly section was based around a few nights camping during the summer of 2020 – it was just myself and the children. The linking memory was of a train crossing our path, like the elk had.

Dust

It is sudden
the disproportionate legs
skin
tight against bone
and hooves running into the track to Trädet

the quick rasp of skidding tyres
grinds
powerless as the dust
which plumes around us

and wraps the road
wildflowers
tips of pine branches

this elk’s black eye is
a planet passing before us
the swollen barrel of his chest
his hind legs
lifting
like the cranes we’d watched take off
from Göte’s fields

our car skids in lines
the elk gallops in triangles

it reminds me of when you were eight
we camped near Kidwelly

it was just us three

Let’s get firewood from the edge
we can toast those marshmallows

walking down the narrow lane
holding sticks
was one of those evenings
you’d imagine people imagined
when they’d say the good old days

you walked ahead

the sound of the train horn
shoved every atom in me and shook it

Just run then –

it is sudden

the carriages
galloping in lines
skidding lines
lines
powerless as dust

the train slicing

through the galaxy

a planet passing
through me

through the barrel of my chest