Diane Jackman

Tivetshall St. Margaret, Norfolk, UK

 

Diane Jackman’s poetry has appeared in small press magazines including Spillway, The Rialto, Elbow Room, snakeskin  and many anthologies in UK and USA. She has won and been placed in several competitions. Starting as a children’s writer she now concentrates on poetry.  With her late composer husband she wrote a number of works for choir and the libretto for Pinocchio  a music theatre piece for the Kings’ Singers and the London Symphony Orchestra. She is passionately interested in medieval rabbit warrens and Anglo-Saxon literature.  In 2017 she started a poetry café in Brandon in the heart of the Breckland, England’s desert.

 

Poem completed 23rd June 2020

 

String Quartet

 

From all points of the compass

by train and taxi, bus and bike, walking

                                    down September lanes

 

to music on the river.

They bring their hopes and expectations

                                        to this quiet church

 

daily trials left behind,

contemplating medieval paint.

                                     Time slips; silence falls.

 

The leader sweeps an up bow,

draws across the strings and the first note

                                           locks us together,

 

composer and performers,

audience and place uniquely joined

                                          in that single moment.