Leaflight

Leaflight

At last the coal is in the grain of my fingers

and under my nails and the smoke works

into the roots of my hair

and the deep crispness of the young day new

and so slightly raw tingling like scratched skin

makes the morning’s darkness no so

and the leaves have been so burning as they fell so

sun and fire and age old red against the dew cleaned green

not yet made mulch by tramping feet

I could weep at it the joy the joy

the joy and the moon burns

with the leaves colours humming and singing

softly in the air it rises up

with stars and planets and everything is

everything is everything

and at last my hand holds an axe and my heels

a swiftness waiting lifting in my limbs and my hand

holds a leaf holds a water droplet

in the crease of its spine supple yet

supple yet the mist which holds

the springing deer the bleakness blue and green and brown

the washed land the pressed earth holds

warmth in my palmprint in my palm 

the lines of my finger

the lines of my father

the fire of the falling leaves

November 2012

Dawn flocks

Dawn flocks

I heard a flight of ducks

or geese yammering they intruded

on my dream, sounded like

human voices a human voice

that cried help

I suspect in fact it is

a fox, that sounds like a child

crying close in the borage

Before I was woken by

the huge laugh of a crow so

near I could feel the

dampness of his

black morning feathers, hear

the thwump of his vanishing

wings that brushed my forehead

cold toes

going to the window I can see

in the first sun and the clean light

and still of morning still not

the yelping flock

in truth there are some gulls

they squabble over something over

the shimmering bristling

of grass beneath the yet

unmuddied sky still

fresh from the burning

cool of stars

I look for the fox

There is none

They die down

The many greens reveal themselves  

Sparrow

Sparrow 

See the sparrow with his

little heart, little heart and little

throat

that babbles

and ripples with notes

like smooth stone ringing

walls sheer and singing

today there is a seeming mist

from behind the trees leaves

breathing a sigh upward

from the mouth the white sky

heavy with leaves lungs

lying suckered to twigs

like something fallen from the nest

breath picked and carried by passing wind

the boreholed core that leaves

dreams skinless

in the day’s racing light

the sparrow sits

his single note on the tree tops

little lungs, little green lungs

singing to the unpainted vanishing

whiteness this morning overhead.

Three poems / Chicks / The Robin

Three poems

You watch a woman walking

on a street with small

tight steps that give nothing

away

and get nowhere

she is trying

to get somewhere but

she won’t

not like that

Where does it go?

Where does that

pavement

go, that she is walking

on, walking on with her

small

steps.

There are new flowers

that have pushed through

the soil with

small shoots, as if from

nowhere they have got up

and out

Things go in the ground

they go down in the mud and mush

old time makes new time. 

Things are green

Soon there will be frogs

You laugh out loud

The world is young yet.  

Chicks

I watched the mother fly from the nest

stuttering under her young’s weight

she got no further than

the length of a lying man

before she had to dump the

headless mess of half grown feathers.

The first’s head was clipped off

by a dinosaur’s snapping beak black

and white jabbering up to the sky

forced down its gnashing gullet.

Soon another came out

I didn’t see it carried, but I found it

not far from the first now buried

with a small clay coloured slug

oozing on its eye

the pin pricked pink of its bare belly

cold and firm in the mud. 

 

A pet cat came and sniffed

The third seems unharmed

and will become stronger now

for this intrusion.

The Robin

The robin watches me while I dig

he watches me with his shiny black eye

side on not blinking

waiting keen and quiet

for me to turn up worms

and the small things that live

in the soil and scutter  

and twitch in his sharp beak

I being a large mammal

who shifts and

shunts the earth around

once, I slice open

a perfect hole, one part

of a tunnel now collapsed on

the heap of what I have dug

the earth is dry and grainy and slips down itself  

Dad comes to look at the trench

and to level it

he kneels and with one hand

paws through the loose earth like

he is swirling hot water

around a bath

I watch him move the earth

I will not lay the wall until he says it is time.