Sarah Pritchard
Sarah Pritchard is a trans-Atlantic yoyo, US military baby born in Norfolk, made in Manchester, U.K. Currently a freshly retired drama teacher, Pippi Longstocking like she lives with animals and spends spare hours free ranging with her dogson Louis-the-lurcher, who walks with her in the wild 'turnupstuffing' and marveling at all of life; Sassi-the-cat regularly tries to join them.
Still personal and political, she has been writing and performing since 1981, and in Playback Theatre Manchester twenty-three years. She has been published in a number of anthologies: Beyond Paradise, The West in Her eyes, Cahoots, Urban Poetry, Nailing the Colours, Manchester Poets Volume3, Raindog, Grapple Annual, Prong & Posy.
The Blue Month
Sarah Pritchard
Because January has a bad reputation
Let us Not say good bye this month.
While Autumn leaves still cushion our foot fall
And bare wooden hands beseech the sky
And great weighty tears of rain
Soak us together
And paths swell to streams
And lanes to rivers
And the sky makes a leaden door
We cannot open or shut.
When I care not one jot whether the wall we lean against
Holds us up or lets us down
Dripping all the way through us
Walking at a flash flood pace
Talking at a downfall volume
Back to the soggy hugs & steamy car
Of Wooded Lanes
Wringing out unwaterproof clothes
driving home half dressed
Under the weather,
Together stretching as we part.
While the silvered birches reveal themselves
Over the wound red whips of dogwood over
The deep green ivy, the glossy green holly
While we can still keep each other warm-
Let us not say goodbye in January.