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27th June, 2025

Friday Poem – ‘The View’ by Sheenagh Pugh

Photo of a green strip of land surrounded by sea with dramatic cliffs in the background.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘The View’ by Sheenagh Pugh from her collection Afternoons Go Nowhere.

The View
For as long as he could remember, the view
from his window had led across a street
to some house the mirror of his own,
and what he could hear through the double-glazing
mainly traffic, heels clacking on asphalt,
late at night, a little drunken happiness.
Now he looks out on a bay, cuts his hedge
hard back, ruthless with the white roses
that would come between him and the ocean.
The nearest houses are over the water,
scattered among fields, few and single,
each built to its own pattern.
To the south is a grove of sycamore
iridescent with starlings, sibilant
in the salt wind. He is waiting for winter,
for trees empty of leaves and birds,
cupping only light and the open sea
between their bare branches.