This poem is taken from Rosemary Drescher’s recent poetry collection ‘The Sun is a Heart Far Off’, published in January 2026 and available to order from Big White Shed, Morecambe, UK. The poems in this collection map the poet’s life journey across the globe from Australia and a childhood spent in Tarawa to London and the shores of Morecambe Bay in northwest England, recording her encounters with the urban and natural world through a lens of empathetic curiosity. The sun, though distant, is felt as an impartial giver of tough love.
Under the shepherding sun
the turgid worship of growing things
and the garden a noiseless factory
my knee an outcrop
where a spider enormous as a mote
knots one end of its tightrope
spanning the distance to the edge of the seat
across the deep drop to the flagstones
the language above my head
in the throat of a sparrow’s chirrup
hasn’t any letter in our alphabet
for churr whip the ringing ear
tunes in to the gushing rinse and lather
of the washing machine hosing
the outside drain and busy baptizers of flowers
razor the air with wingbeats too rapid to catch
stalk and leaf deep in a standing prayer
receiving the morning’s benediction
a yellow-beaked preacher whistle slurs his sermon
pauses to listen out for the answer
