Anne Louise Anglim (Senior Officer, Young People's Library Service) presents Alison L. Craig with the first prize in the Booked! Annual Poetry Competition. Also in attendance are Allan Gordon (Learning Support Librarian) and Fiona Matheson (Area Librarian). Alison's poem, An Ordinary Belonging, is published below.

An Ordinary Belonging

The taxi-driver's face old as a cliff
in the saccharin city light.
The streets flat, plain as wedding ribbons
unfurl, say nothing except first right,
second left, one-way. You breathe
next to me, our child sleeps in my arms'
belonging and I imagine, or is it remember?
a blue kitchen.

The house is quiet, obedient, ordinary.
I wait oddly on the step taking in the bricks,
my footprints lightening as I stand too long
in the new rain. Next door's cat stops,
one paw puppet-strung, regards me
for five slow seconds, morphs itself
onto a fence, clever as a rhyme, stalks away.
The taxi engine growls in the dark.

I hold my cold key to the lock, turn, push.
Letters avalanche my name, my address
sliding away at my feet. An alphabet of silence
hangs in the hall. It's still here, says a voice
behind me. I'll put the kettle on.
Life ghosts around me, whispering.
Home. My heart flat-lines like the word,
needs just one beat, one exhalation.

Tomorrow, I will stand in the sun,
gather sweet alyssum, rub memory's scent
between thumb and forefinger, call it beautiful.
For now, words are gone; I can find none
for the way the carpet crumples that corner,
pictures quick with colour find their place
on the other side of my eyes.
For this ordinary belonging that is home.

Alison L. Craig