The control room
        (after Eric Ravilious)

Room 29, Home Security,
wartime maps
ghosting the corridor.
Is she typist, telegrapher
or code-breaker, the woman
still at her desk
deep under Whitehall?

Like so many fugitives
she could be unaccounted for
simply pencilled in,
but she sits
unaffected by sunlight
as if soliciting an oracle
in her watercolour grave.

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Copyright © 2017 Pauline Stainer All rights reserved
from Sleeping under the Juniper Tree
Bloodaxe Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission