Poems to get us through: Nature Walk by Colette Bryce

In the second of a series in which the former poet laureate picks poems from her shelves to comfort and inspire us in isolation, Carol Ann Duffy introduces a gentle study of isolated souls

Colette Bryce was born in Derry in 1970 and has received many awards for her work. A significant editor of poetry magazines, she is the incoming editor of Poetry Ireland Review in 2020. Although the poem here was written well over a decade ago, it acquires a glittering sense of loss, a prescience, in these days when we leave our homes for the briefest of times and walk carefully apart. Carpe diem, we might think, as we read the gentle, human noticing of this poem.