RUINED COTTAGE - poempoempoem

Among the hills
peaked sunshine mounted on a globe
splits shafts of ray through the slow glades
in crevices dewy still from morning intimacy
a local time lapse only a speaker knows to notice
to move between
in slits above nature a loftier freedom can be spied
places a soul might soar to if embattled clouds
oppressed less, if splattered hillsides offered less fast-moving
cavities of twilight and exposure
later, the developers have turned digital, &
the spots of light which were your artifice will be rationalised away
now, limbs unveiled through moss & mulch
cleave at half glimpsed & inflecting & counterflecting displays
of shade and pattern, seemingly inwardly but distant,
the unconsumable eye, for the pleasure of the
self-contained and concocting parcel of a man
a hierarchy of peace arbitrates, midges offend
& dry hillsides spiked with broom, jewelled with
rockford husks & creases where crime collects make me cautious
I love to walk
but in travelling, there are too many signs of MAN to
fit me too. i saw a stream of rubbish in Peru pour from a town
into the toothed gullet of a pig
he slowly mounted up the steep ascent of indiscriminate & familiar
need, stealing with silent lapse to join the road
where in our van the water we doused the engine with to
cool seemed before my eyes yet another, & the vomit
i passed from rum & dust & transport, seemed yet another stream
On I passed
there's pleasure in remembrance, in collecting
the ownership that comes from being discrete
& experience, that folds in pasture
inappropriate first love, deeper joy, delusions
& it's a takeaway, for the living to live now
beyond me i take as an offence
Thus did I steal
from climate peace & solitude & in place install
deeper dregs of soul, hoping to gain from this a
literal fuck, a communion or a sign,
i think in terms of a fishing line grazing the lake floor
or cadging from stars
superstitious only of wording & self-conscious in
immortal emptiness & the walking of dogs
recanting screens i've looked on & all indecent looking
pacing hours through shadows moving between
struts on breeze blocks through windows where you
are looked on in the looking
through the fifteen windows i now see i see
fifteen windows
standing on a chair i see hills i will drive to
follow a speck swallow through a thoroughfare &
ask what chase i hope to gain from this
greeting & inarticulate harp


recently published in the Other Room Anthology 3, with thanks