The Kill / Hiding / A stage

The Kill

Black teeth and wires

dead wood ripped from grey scrabbling earth

the thighs and the root ends

sprawling veins still damp

and humming.

He cut a path through the field, dragging

the beast behind him,

its open eye white

and unseen in the dark save by the scatting arc

of the dangled torch

breathless and nervy in my sweaty

cold palm.

Limbs stiff and bouncing,

hopping over rivets and ploughscars

whooping and bleeding no stars

came to us, tripping on pebbles

and pumpkin creepers.

Tugged fur came off in clumps at the rasp

of clutching hands

And his head

shaved and drawn,

faced forward, brow breaking the air’s

waves to the fire

that burned up hooves and hairs

and drew in the night around it.  

 

Hiding

Sleep soundly like a

crab, all in a space

of rocks

and a drip of water

all spiny shell safe and

egg shell white, wet sand.

Only the calls catch the wind

The towers, the lighthouses.

A stage

Everything seems cut out,

in layers, falling neatly behind
the last,
slotted into the earth

Here is where the house
ends
Here is where the trees

begin
Here is where the trees
end

Truffle hunting / He wrote his name / I remember when the lake froze / The Black Bear

Truffle hunting

they had tied bells to the dogs' necks

they ran like a grotto over the slope, flicked in and out of the tall pines

that are misted in the morning

sometimes you could swear the mountain was a cloud and that the cloud could be breathed away

but no. the hounds chased through the trunks

determined against the cold, although spindly.

I could not see the man.

in that place the boars dig with their noses and the people are lost
and you are.  

Winter 2008/9

He wrote his name

In the dust, he wrote his name
but water could not hold it
so he took the bark from an old oak tree
that was cracked and carved
as rocks by magma
or an old man's tongue
and slept the night in the dust
where names were finger traced
in the safe place, where only

the cuckoo spit that fell on his face 

in the morning could bother him

I remember when the lake froze

I remember when the lake froze
and we rushed
to skid around on the
ice
we jumped and jumped on it
to make it
crack
but it never did
that lake must have been
frozen deep deep down
probably for miles
and miles

I remember the bits
of things stuck
in the ice
leaves, twigs
half in
half out

The Black Bear

The idea of the Bear unnerves me

silent and huge, ash and fur and
red eyeball looking.

Upright, like a man standing
paws leather and ready, hung
shadows on padding gloom
over the floorboards.

Hollow bone, echoing
like a horses gurn
waiting at the top of the stairs.

It is wrapped in the sheets and breathing
waiting unmoving and unbending is the Black Bear

Not like the stars
not flicking between the trees, not hiding

not concealed
a speckle on an oak leaf.

It is in the clearing
unheard, felt like a lift in your stomach, a stone
on the nape of your neck
waiting in the kitchen with the peelers and the forks.

Behind you, on all fours
slit shaped nostrils
looking up.

Frost / Almighty glow-worm / We came back

Frost

There was frost on the ground this morning

when first  I woke

and was confronted by the day

Everywhere was clothed

in a layer of white

that clung to the fibres

of the earth

cloaking, suffocating

protecting

it was clean

and the grass shivered.

Then I slept again

and dreamt

And when I woke the frost was gone

Winter 2006/7

Almighty glow-worm

Almighty glow-worm,

I have seen soft trod

soles rippling grass on the hillside

and tank tracks

in the frozen mud filled

with sewage

Almighty glow-worm

I have seen bomb blasted

buildings like stacks of wafer

and all the while

the prayer song of

a hundred million minds abounds

Almighty glow-worm

I have felt time like spiders

claws on my shoulders, bristling

my neck

men moving mountains

in and out of market archways

and phantom housed cavities

of faces at every turn

I have seen a city

with death in its every step

and I have felt far from them

for they are nothing but walking

inevitabilities that shift themselves

around like sand in nothing

but an impression of what it is

to be alive, all mighty glow worm

I have seen above the walls

around my forest and I have

climbed up high in the cedars

and the story trees

and tasted the chill air

and there has been a wake in front

of me a gentle sea beast breathing

up and down 

and I have walked out

across the hills to meet it,

across the humming grass,

but when I reached it

it was not there

and from the tress the loudspeakers

sang out one and a half thousand years

of nothing but an impression

of what it is

to be alive 

Cairo? Early 2008

We came back

Then we came back

And it was as if we were never gone

We met up like lines on an etch-a sketch

and it flowed like a river

There were all the same old things

the same sounds and smells

and silences

it was like the whole thing had never happened

but I still find sand in my pockets

and in my eyes in the morning

you woke me

held me in your arms and

carried me through the darkness of the garden

swaddled me in the warmth

of the night-time sky

in the daylight places when they are

left to themselves

At first I wouldn’t come

but you picked me up and brothe

the dreams from my brow

lifted the midnight sack from my small face

and showed me

the sky torn apart

like orange peel,

like cracking paint

like icy puddles

behind it there were war colours

dawn colours

When we came back, like pieces of string.