Poetry
Photo by Rex Duffy.
If ever there was a gift to a poet, the chance to unearth the centuries-old remains of a woman of her age, if not of her time, is one. Stemming from Rosemary Herbert's experience uncovering the only fourth-century pagan in a cemetery of more than ninety Roman-era Christian graves, the poem "Grave Finds," first published in Radar Poetry, exemplifies the contents of her forthcoming poetry chapbook, Sisters in Time. To be published in June 2026, that chapbook will deliver hands-on details of life on an archeological dig during one scorching summer in Winchester, England. It will offer lyrical glimpses of the water meadows of the River Itchen flowing in view of St. Catherine's Hill, celebrate the resounding sound of cathedral bells, and revel in ruminations on the strangely intimate experience of becoming acquainted -- through their bones and grave finds -- with figures that are sixteen-centuries old. Finally, these poems will transport the reader to the juncture of then and now, where the lives of two women separated by centuries meet at an intersection of Roman roads to become as surely joined as one skeleton's mended bones. Here, the poet finds herself fated to give new life to her unknown sister in time, whose eternal resting place she disturbed in pursuit of archeological history.
Other published poems by Rosemary Herbert include:
"In Elsie's Garden" in The Last Milkweed: An Autumnal Anthology of Poetry (Tupelo Press)
"a murmuration of starlings" winner of the Dreamers 2024 Haiku contest
"skein of geese" in The Dewdrop/dewdrops
"Three Maine Haiku" in Tiny Seed Literary Journal and in their Poetry of the Wild Flowers anthology
Grave Finds
Teased out from under your skull,
sixteen centuries after it graced your hair,
like your bones, your hairpin
is white and unspeakably precious.
Fancy with filigree so artful and delicate,
it could only have been conceived in love --
as I find myself fervently hoping that you were.
Your beginnings can never be known
but your hairpin fastens for me this sweet certainty:
Before you perished in the bloom of youth,
surely you sauntered with this treasure nestled in your tresses
along this way to the water meadows,
in search of watercress and a lover's embrace,
just as I pass this way on the same errands today.
In your small final plot these testimonials:
Someone laid you down at last
with enough tenderness to dress your hair,
with sufficient generosity
to lay in a bowl brimming with coins
-- with enough anguish
over your entry into the unknown
to place a knife in each of your hands.
Copyright Rosemary Herbert
First published in Radar Poetry, "Grave Finds" was named "Noteworthy" in the 2024 Coniston Prize competition.
It will be published in the chapbook Sisters in Time, forthcoming in June 2026 from Finishing Line Press.