Local
Spirits
East
Anglia’s farmlands rise in the fens,
a
waltz of flat earth that ends in the sea.
The
sun this autumn lights the trees, a scree
of
sullied gold to simplify and cleanse
each
life of sawtooth replication, such
pith
and seed— time’s ripe alarm. Gravity’s
hold
upon the world unsteadies. A tease
of
brushwork skews perspective: cross-hatched Dutch
tiles,
hallmark silver. The blue, still weather
sotto voce in the eaves finds purpose
in
the roof’s pitch. A correctness, leather-
faced,
waits within the acres. Only crows
attend,
their ratcheting sleekness a fuss
of
wings, where totem straw men decompose.
§
The
life we lived is past. Each spasm treat
and
bagged-quail flutter focuses the mind
on
whatever else remains. Years unwind
in
deadbeat witness to their own conceit.
June’s
solstice green gives way to pretty shades
of
apricot and ochre. Memory
circles
in the updraft, a memory
cut
deep with summer’s sobriquet. The blade’s
cut,
deep into the heartwood, heals, rounding
to
the centre. The great oaks coalesce,
one
face, one touch, their presence a sounding
of
nothing at all, only now the sense
of
balance lost, where soixante-neuf
finesse
fixed
afternoons in fiery present tense.
§
Forever
altered in our lives, when all
we
wanted was to live without regrets,
lie
plausibly, and learn to take all bets,
the
odds of salmon at the waterfall
as
good as any here. The webcam, perched
above
the screen, greets everyone the same
as
anyone you never wished to name,
discreet,
another tribe to be researched
to
meet our brief. We speak, so formal now
the
very recognition balks each word
and
we, once loving, substitute know-how
when
a kiss would do. Log on to this: make
room
for all we are, dotcom and absurd
except
in looks impossible to fake.
§
The
earth turns well enough, and pausing dawn
and
dusk to second-guess the lives we swore
would
test horizons, signified a door
was
opening, a bolting meson drawn
freehand,
the quark less strange. Before the genes
were
sub-let, clauses for the Übermensch
to
covet, other moments mattered: wrench
of
love with each good-bye, and what love means
without
you. This is our inheritance.
No
confidential chemical repairs
the
switch, the synapse haywire with romance.
As
with our turning to the sun, and by
again,
life’s little matters nudge affairs
between
the acid and the alkali.
§
A
native climate, the familiar street
that
leads from home to everywhere, enough
time,
distance, and the discipline a rough-
neck
way of life assumes against defeat—
the
lessons here infer an afterlife.
The
ghost most missed allows a parting kiss,
a
mist before the sun. Love comes to this,
a
favoured lover leaving, the jack-knife
in
the sunny pool and then a stillness.
We
live as though we waited to exist,
expected
somewhere— black tie, formal dress—
to
dance and dance and dance, yet know
(bright
boutonniere, sweet orchid at the wrist),
outside,
the black car waiting when we go.
§
Each
day of greening bronze, patina-hopes
for
better luck, karma less roguish, slips
by,
mocks this meantime life. Spriggy juleps,
jazz,
sherbet parasols, your horoscopes—
of
rich and richer, gold first, then the age
of
silver, trickledown to pyrites last
of
all completes the pantomime with fast-
track
alloys, red Mercedes all the rage,
everywhere
a rusty incoherence.
Beyond
this breathy envelope, the rest
of
everything continues with events
too
distant to decipher. Hubble cranes.
The
stars respond with barcode poses, test-
card
patterns of the ghost within the mains.
§
The
day is bright enough for shadows. Here
against
the burning rim, a deeper black
gives
everything the offhand look of slack
technique.
Sketchbook faces disappear
into
the cut deck on the table. Each
downloaded
edgy trace would indicate
some
worlds are stone, and yet another’s fate
is
frozen at the centre, out of reach.
Ours,
blue as tincture lapis, promenades,
invites
us to regard the molten core.
The
tug of Newton’s creature keeps the gods
within
their woozy orbits. Colourless
silk-rustle
liquids folded into four
resume
the role with square-root politesse.
§
The
present is delivered late. The news
is
yesterday’s: the weather moving in,
old
wounds reopened, a prize, and one thin
girl
dressed in feather boas. If I choose,
the
door is opened and the world takes place,
not
real but real enough, an interface
of
software, boredom, and between us space
reprogrammed
as a substitute for grace.
The
great Khan ruled the world, and nothing more
is
known. His reservoir of bully genes
engages
now and then— a half-life core
of
wild boys breaking horses, of tent ropes
still
knotted a certain way, and the means
to
taste the dust and name its isotopes.
§
On
Peru’s dry coastline, dry where salt wind
rides
inland plains down to the Pacific,
shifting
dunes expose a more specific
habitat
of humans in their parts— skinned,
bones
hollow baked with ash, the limbs a reed-
bound
X stretched taut with seal hide, clay-packed screed
of
faces paint-traced red and black— a breed
well
suited to conditions there. Seaweed
restricts
the mouths to tidal dialects.
Ritual
required this reassembly.
Position
by position, each reflects
a
rite of passage purifying flesh
for
paradise, as foundling there the sea-
plucked
child, prepared, tucked arid in its crèche.
§
All
moments are retrieved in time, the door
bricked-over
still a door, the year it took
cut
roman, chiselled in the inglenook.
The
lintel twists with numerals, the four
walls
buckling with crookbacked joists until
ghosts
hang homeless in the lurching levels.
The
future in your hand, what fortune tells
in
nebulae, cold-sweat dreams the sibyl
renders
into riddles— the world made new
in
each response— in Paul’s Epistles, lost
souls
seek salvation in a billet-doux
of
promises. The Zen sky’s empty fire
consumes
its absent tenant. Pentecost
and
Elvis cult, all, heave with our desire.
§
A
simple light is woven through the walls,
and
resonates until the room achieves
a
frequency more common to the leaves
of
hand-built verses than to that of awls
and
bevels. Perfect planes of featheredge
electrons
folded with the sand and lime
transform
this wattle to a trowelled sublime
we
hover in, and, constant to this pledge
of
space, remind us all we have is here.
The
universe beyond— contorted slip
where
superstrings of tatty time cohere,
dimensions
dazzle and then disappear
into
a future physics— slurs, gossip
unfounded,
sly, just close enough to hear.
§
Days
cold enough, the double whiskies coax
sweet
nothings from this winter thinness. Still,
bravado
proves a meagre codicil
to
all we were. The atom clock invokes
the
usual disclaimers— collapsed wells
marking
springs that failed, the name
each
shadow memorised before we came.
In
this repose, the split log’s spark-spit tells
what
weather rained or shone here. Forests fall,
a
dusk of greeny black to summarise
the
incidental beauty of it all.
Was
this as you imagined, when the car
was
new, the chamois squealing on the prize
enamel?
Summer floats there like a star.
§
The
last of November, and brassy crows
pick
over fields in hard frost. In the quick-
quick-slow
of hiphop flight, a bruise-black slick
of
shadow dominates the dry stalk rows.
The
threshers, meeting with a million strokes,
baled
acres for tomorrow’s bread, and now
this
accident remains— bent fields’ kow-tow
to
cold, the crumble-glass brightness a hoax
once
the oldest season is upon us.
Heartbeats
slow to winter’s pace. The tannins
leak
prisms, chasing summer’s omnibus
of
green. The trees’ tableau vivant redeems
no
living thing, the clutch-claw mannequins
set
hard as spore-cast in the frozen streams.
§
The
summer faded with the roses. I
stand
by the roadside, on the border with
a
heathen nation. North— a monolith
of
cold and wind-cut heath, the rainy sky
the
only constant at this latitude—
proves
more than a direction. Planets twist,
position
lovers we can least resist
just
out of reach, a future we pursued,
a
past denied, and time now anywhere
but
here. A day of journeys is one day,
the
life we make of it one life. Compare
the
facts as bare necessities accrue:
a
rainbow hung senseless in compass spray,
departures,
and the course considered true.
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