Close by the ford
down Longcroft Lane
from shouting meadow
he rises, dances skyward
to an invisible summit.
Black on azure
flickering atom
suspended on filament
cobweb-fine, drips peals
of tiny glass bells
pitch rising, falling
tumbling, a cascade
of summer song
formless yet formed
without verse
chorus
or middle eight
yet somehow knowable.
For an hour he sends
but never receives.
Coded intelligence
secrets for unseen ears
wordless bulletin
of Trinity rapture.
A spring when the slush lingers
clouds march in dreary battalions
and rain, unrelenting white noise
turns farmyard muck to a curse
is a desolate time to learn about loss.
Hobbled and helpless
we watched the terrier expire.
With nicotine gums
breath a staccato whisper
her valiant pulse dwindled
to a moth’s flutter
martyred by a barn rat’s
viperous incisor
a pricked death sentence.
In a private ceremony
we buried her by the elm
at the top of the big field
so she’d have a view
of the distant three spires.
Once again I find myself in Melissa Harrison, The Wildlife Trusts and Elliott & Thompson’s debt, as my poem Lux Brumalis has been selected for inclusion in this, the final installment in their splendid Seasons series.
Available in November from all the usual outlets, although I recommend you buy a physical copy (they’re gorgeous to hold) here.
Christmas is coming. You know it makes sense.
That unstirring January morning
in Nicholl’s Covert
we found proof
of the night hunter’s
grisly work
blushing umbra
diluted crimson
circled unfolded wings
perfect symmetry
crucified, frozen
in snowbound flight.
Departed the strutting
crowing potentate
emerald, amber, scarlet
regalia now faded
to a cipher, caged
in brittle ossuary
his heart still
as a pebble
ours, quickened
by the implacable
the random
the savage
and the queasy
inner ferment
that our own
lustre may fade
in a single gasp
and our flight
be just as fleeting.
Forsaken now
stands this stronghold
against winter’s jolt
and summer cloudburst
seasoned by centuries
once humid with life
harbour for milk-breathed beast
hoard for the harvest.
Dank, airless within
lit in patches by beams
of drifting lint
picking out last year’s
buckled hay bales
and corrupted metal
a mildew reek
buffets the senses.
But pause a moment.
Draw breath.
Look closer.
This old frame hums
with a different essence.
The swallow
carves exultant arcs
banking, dipping
defying g-force
takes flies mid dive
carries them back
to the gaping mouths
colonising the soffit.
Follow the cracks
erratic fault lines
in the brickwork
to a dim recess
where fledgling starlings
demand nourishment
shredding the air
with electronic discord
and secluded behind
an ungoverned sprawl
of feral bindweed
waxing, multiplied
from a random
gust-blown seed
a sitting flycatcher
warms her stippled clutch.
Under dusk’s shawl
up there by the
redundant grain hoist
quiet, soft as a lisp
a barn owl ghosts home
from the hunt
with a vole, plucked
from life to give life.
But below the horizon
coiled for the attack
broods a menace
a relentless coming
of reclaimed timber
of glass, steel
and artificial light
an open plan Elysium.
Soon, some alpha nabob
will acquire, fumigate
straighten drunken gables
plug it into the world
of devices, and park sleek
wheeled missiles where once thistles
ragwort and groundsel thrived.
I
I am the trumpet muted
the bow unrosined
and the fiddle unstrung.
I am oblique sunlight
pale illumination of
a world undernourished.
I am the broadcast interrupted
dead air, station leeching
anaemic, into station.
II
I am the garnet shock
of rosehip on frost
the robin’s titian flare.
I am the icebound babble
observed, not heard
under brittle silver.
I am the creeping metabolism
of the trout, wintering
deep below the current.
I am the heart-chilling scream
of the courted vixen
the crowing pheasant’s boast
the snipe’s ‘peep-peep’
defying, folding distance
across the whispering marsh.
I am the withered husk
on the naked briar
the sap retreating.
I am the fiery Saturnalia
the blacksmith spark, rising
then extinguished, spent.
I am the otherworld
beyond the black perimeter
of the sheltering blaze.
I am the chiselled gravestone
of the old year in repose
and the muttered obsequies.
I am Janus, churlish sentry
clinging to yesterday
wary of tomorrow.
II
I am the child unfathered
the page from a book
you read once, forgot
but must surely read again.
I’m back at Ladysmith
and at its wilting zenith, the longest day
exiting Cancer, the doorway to Capricorn
halts
diffusing latitude, warping longitude
folds time, space and place
to a pillowed mass.
Pulsing air, nearer drug than bludgeon
sedates us with weighted persuasion
as we lie on a carpet of trampled grasses
while a palisade of stalks draws the eye
to a vaulted view, linear
but in no sense limited.
A lark transmits. We receive, constrained
by language, but alert to the possibilities.
For the longest instant
we inhabit the province
between the once was
and the soon to be.
The pond, hugged by bullrush and marigold
so close but a galaxy away, for now
is a cooling temptation to be resisted.
