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.