The barn owl is an ancient vector
on the post in the blue silence
It slips a million years between
thin bones and structures of feather –
A predator engineered by galaxy –
Mudflats in the estuary pop and click
with the worms’ horrific cryptography –
Oyster Catchers read it as they pick
scraps from the crab corpse in the pool
then are torn from the sand by desire.
Tunneling into the cliff, the sea pops
and clicks rocks against recorded time
and daylight in the tunnel sketches webs
on the vault-line of the limestone –
Striations of land are sunk into the coast
the marsh holds a sheep skeleton –
The lady joins the doomed Gawain,
topless and expecting courtesy
We are ancient predators –
our eyes scan the front and the field
shifts and pulls towards us –
folds in the land are held straight
by our mind whose horizon is fixed
even while the body scrambles –
The lord of the castle leaves Gawain
to trek a last trek to the the rock chapel
in the green-black velvet valley –
cold in the morning – the horse
shifts and breathes under them –
the image of a single carrot impressed
into the horse-mind network
Mist lifts off the sweating body of the hills –
Sleep is slight like ice on a puddle –
We could not climb the stair quietly
the wood would crack and souls stir
stilling erratic movement of the eyeball
We remember dreams – of snakes
coiled around us, writhing on the bed –
of a silent goblin, watching, still,
until he fades – and tales of animals –
bouldering to find an adder nest
suddenly, and the shock was great –
a spider hides in the folds of a bag.
The engine pops and clicks as it cools
as the road humps over the land
holding us fixed, as the earth moves.
Swallows pop and click on the wires –
Geiger counters of each other’s name.
We are naked under these clothes –
she said it herself and I can feel it –
Scars on the land of the robes –
A bird warbles and beeps frantically –
then the fell runner whose hooves
scar the peat in flight from the lord’s hunt
Swallows struck from silver hang
in the sky like the bright moon
beyond three embracing drops in glass
and the black slate of the belfry –
the university where someone sits
in the library, feet up, on the phone –
and thrift clings to the rock pool –
small purple flowers held
for convolutional identification –
I hold the hand of an ancient woman
to help her through a gate and see
the old post office by the field.
We pass her later on the way
“I did think you would catch me”
I hold a red layered geode
someone had cracked on the beach
I hold a stone like a bearded capuchin
and bring it down to pop and click
rocks on the hard edged beach
My friends, there is no end
though the sun will soon expand
and the earth be smoothed
by the weight of the turbulent sea
There is no end – the habitable zone
will slip beyond us as we cling
by thrift, like thrift to the rock –
We might build a planet engine
to shift whole seas to tack our orbit
or we might not – it changes nothing
You want to preserve us forever
but we are preserved – I declare it
We are archived of ourselves
of this moment – I archive us.
Now tie these greens around your waist
and watch the grass move under cows
who carefully avoid (though they kiss)
the bluebells
Poems – Aesthetic
Mount Parys
The land was turned out
by hand and then wind.
Now the earth’s offcuts
rest in endless piles
under the sun, and us.
What would the old soul
who lamented stone’s
upheaval, think now
as we walk, silent
with awe at our world
Sea Glass 30/30
*

Come for me,
Come, take my hand
I ask you again –
you cough and tense
Your wrack is my wrack
We squirm together
*
Continue readingSea Glass 29/30
Sea Glass 28/30
*

Are you Loki’s daughter?
Your bowl of hunger
You hold me and unhold
Rule my underworld
I see you in old illustrations
I am your chosen
*
Continue readingSea Glass 27/30
*

Your hair is damp
and your shoulders
I am mother of pearl
in silver setting
Hang me on your ear!
Let me dangle by your neck
*
Continue readingSea Glass 26/30
*

Hot, it is so hot
A hand finds a hand
Dry heat, the window
cracked – a hand finds more
The morning beckons,
and beckons, and beckons
*
Continue readingSea Glass 25/30
*

A mushroom parts grass
to hear in grey light
on the moor, birds pass.
The tarn is black –
waves curve over
casting darkness at us
*
Continue readingSea Glass 24/30
*

The hornbeam rocks in the wind
– leaves striated, curled –
Planets thunder in the green
or blue aurora
draping your eyes
in winding canals
*
Continue readingSea Glass 23/30
*

Standing naked on a plinth
she commands –
…I forget the concept
There is only herness
I am a little lamb
looking up at her
*