Each Sunday in December there will be seasonal poems on the blog. For a few years I lived in the Withington area of Manchester, so I recognised the shop mentioned in Annie Muir’s poem. It’s from her pamphlet New Year’s Eve, published by Broken Sleep Books in 2021.

Crab Snowglobe

Thrown in with shoelaces and paracetamol,
a souvenir from Copson Street pound shop –

this rusty orange crab on a rock
with specks of glitter resting

in every nook and cranny.
Around the base there are footprints in sand

and another, smaller crab,
exactly alike except I can touch it.

Inside your hard, glass globe
you seem to be in some other dimension

like the reflection in a mirror,
or memory.

Either dormant or ecstatic –
when I shake you up

it is for a moment New Year’s Eve,
your pincers grasping to catch the confetti

that floats around your head
in kaleidoscope slow motion.

Then, when each piece has fallen, you wait
for something else to happen.

Biography

Annie Muir lives in Glasgow. Her debut pamphlet New Year’s Eve was published by Broken Sleep Books. Pre-pandemic she handed out poems on the street outside local libraries, and she has a podcast – Time for one Poem – aimed at complete beginners to poetry.
@time41poem