A Merlin and a Myrtle and a Fox
On raised boglands where dead plants live in flooded rainwater the height of mice everywhere you look sphagnum moss drinks water like long-distance runners. Moss perishes and returns as peat. A fox, through a gap in the heather, tears berries off a myrtle bush, to the scent of a downpour returning as a downpour. A merlin, the smallest bird of prey for miles around, having just tail-rushed a startled Meadow Pipit across the bushes, now gives a sharp, clattering call, and a song spits out, from the raptor’s hooked, chunky beak, air-like crumbs that slip down between the petals and berries, unnoticed by the fox, hidden by the myrtle. A Sundew on the bogland also gets hungry, gets a hankering for the three segments of a fly. On its leaves, red tentacles trap insects and all manner of gullible things with a pool of stickiness. A promise. All the nutrients of a fly are digested, absorbed by the Sundew. Under the merlin. Unnoticed by the fox and obscured by the myrtle. A rambler lugs a spade to the peat to dig out what he bets will be the butter stored in holes from locals, years ago. He digs up spots of air, bursting to turn solid, that the merlin dropped while clattering. The hit of his spade releases a perfume of ecstasy. Of course, he digs and digs as unexpected happiness grips his body. The rambler forgets to ramble home, to eat, to drink even flooded rain. Until he happily keels over in the myrtle, screened out by the fox, unnoticed by the merlin. Artist in a Hayfield
She stands at an easel
in a parcel of land
and conjures up rivers
with her paintbrush
that argue in convergence,
in droops between hayfields
where festering secrets
are taken by the breeze.
She takes a dip
without leaving her canvas,
bathes in the palette of flowers
sprouting up on the banks,
and the truth that marriage
and employment and motherhood
undertook to teach her
emerges in the paint.
Ground Control
To navigate new territories,
fall asleep in harbour towns?
To lose your marbles
in a haunted metropolis?
No. You leave to ascend
beyond the sun, beyond exhaustion.
I imagine you on morning jogs
through purgatorial rays.
I search for you
in regions not found on maps.
As if flesh and bone
has any hope of finding you.
I lose the day to alcohol.
I will lose tomorrow to sobriety.
In the high soul-quarry
I wish to jog with you
across the length of reparation,
never reaching the end.
Flight of the dragonfly 