entering the wood

I'm saturated with images and impressions from a couple of days revisiting childhood places on the wild and exquisite Exmoor coast. There are so many pictures and words I want to share with you about it, and also my excitement at the possibilities of workshops up there in the summer; but I'm also saturated still in work and deadlines, so once again this is some old work.

The brief excerpt below is from a long poem of mine called 'Entering the Wood', written during time spent in a friend's woodland a few years ago, not far from where I was in West Somerset at the weekend. The whole poem appears in my collection Bardo (Shearsman 2011).

Hope you enjoy this short section.

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from Entering the Wood

February is coppicing
    spring-cleaning the wood

        remembering line, vaulting, architecture
    thinning hazel scrub
        to let in summer
when it comes


    the pattern of our saws
their dissonant harmonies
        weak sun on our backs
thin feather of smoke
    and the showers of rufous catkins
   around our feet
        the mallet’s knock
its echo


            on the road the erratic pulse
        of traffic
       
we think of tidying our lives



© Roselle Angwin

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