Sisters in Time

Stemming from poet Rosemary Herbert's work unearthing the burial of a young pagan woman in a fourth-century, Roman-era cemetery in Winchester, England, Sisters in Time provides hands-on descriptions of life on an archeological dig, and revels in ruminations on the strangely intimate and reverent experience of becoming acquainted - through skeletal remains and grave finds - with figures from the distant past. These poems celebrate the landscape and soundscape of the cathedral city where the River Itchen and its expansive water meadows overlooked by St. Catherine's Hill remain much as they were in Roman times. While offering whispers from the distant past as well as the resounding sound of Winchester Cathedral's bells, these poems tell the story of experiences as disparate as washing ancient bones and flirting in the pubs. Sisters in Time transports the reader to the juncture of then and now, where the lives of two women separated by centuries 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 revealed in the pursuit of archeological history.