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Reprieve

Alison Prince

Be careful.
Just because death came
close enough to feel its non-breathing
and then stepped back,
you are no matador.
The blackness does not charge
in some bullring
but waits in yoghurt pot and coffee cup,
tapping the fingernails.
The reprieve papers are not signed.
Stand at the cliff’s edge.
Watch great birds
rest their easy weight on the north wind.


Alison Prince

From Waking at Five Happens Again (Edinburgh / Glenrothes: Mariscat / Happenstance, 2016). Reproduced by permission of the publishers.

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Best Scottish Poems 2016

About this poem

This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2016. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2016 was Catherine Lockerbie.

Editor's comment:

I read many poems about illness, ageing and approaching death in making this selection – poetry naturally lends itself to such meditative ruminations. The multi-talented Alison Prince, novelist and biographer as well as poet, has written a deeply personal collection of pieces on her own mortality. 'Reprieve' considers the fragile border between life and death with elegance, restraint and acceptance.

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Best Scottish Poems 2016

edited by Catherine Lockerbie
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Alison Princeb.1931

Alison Prince is a poet, and prize-winning writer for children, who lives and works on the Isle of Arran.
More about Alison Prince

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