1
you find yourself
here again
as if in dream
this bleak bog
black and ochre
home to cotton grass and kestrels
shaped flints, a
sheep's skull
in the absences
where small deaths press
(scatter of fleece
like dirty snow
a spike of bone, a
tangled wreath of feather and sinew)
where the winds
prowl
where the
buzzard's cry falls through space
and there's no ear but your own to catch it
easy to believe
you're at the edges of the earth
that you might
forget your name
and no-one to call
it
here darkness
waits close at hand
shadowing the day
the way a
nightmare tracks you
just a tangle of
voices
(you shiver)
maybe the long
dead criss-crossing the heavy air
tinners hunters
tribesmen
whose lives have
littered this land
for thousands of
years
flesh become bog
cotton, mouse and mud
or a wild baying
like the hounds of hell
your own fear
following you
like a grey wolf
ghosting your
footsteps
here where the
heart of Devon clenches tight
and squeezes out
its rivers
like arteries
clotted with granite
Dart and Tavy
Teign and Taw and
Ockment
opening from the
earth's dark magma
like creases in
the palm of a hand
we are made of all
this
peat-bog and
granite
slate and the soft
red sandstone that yields to the sea's caress
water
you're unwinding
these stories
down from the
iron-black night of the moor
© Roselle Angwin & Vikky Minette, 2010/13
No comments:
Post a Comment