In the future
they may scrutinise
the age we mislaid wonder.
Evaluate the epoch
of our long-forgotten grace

Landfill
for the Burial Ground

Trolleys
for the River Gods

Spray cans
for the Painted cave,

and say,

"This,
is when they
lost their way"

Come the Hill
and contact notes
abound

arriving in their droves,
they'll sup the berry-blood
of hedgerows,
in the cheese-and-ale
mist that hove the woodlands
from their mooring

My love for this
remains undimmed,
if anything , intensified,
as in these clock-wise hands
I clutch,

both epilogue and origin..

..I'm
running
dry

stagnating
in these crude resides

too easily
this wind-farmed face
betrays my base emotions

As the alleyways incarcerate,

their nauseating politics
unqualify my
sympathetic
ear


Therefore..


If I appear
uninterested
its just
because


I am

A while to get the eye back in
reconstitute the faculty
for feeling without
touch

-the repetitious ritual
makes for cover on the open road-

A villainy of tree-lined habits
camouflage, dissimulate,
reject the townsmen fidget

and all must age inside the barrel,
thicken in its oaken recess

slivered for the minutes
of its instinct

The kirlian singe
of a kingfisher
wins me round ,

slaps me from
my prole malaise

his cobalt-button, blazing buckshot,
nervous surge of gaudy purpose,
willow- hurdled Catherine wheel
whirring ...

is something of the infinite
disposed in our positioning

both impish lairds of nook and fen
don hedge-smoke caps
of leafy tan

by coveting his oxygen,
I'm coming up
for air too quickly

bursting round
the cockling brook
of rain-sung river bends

Stop

       Writing


                     "Notes to self"

You

       attention-seeking

                     ******

Shingle shook,
these bookish handles
cove your head in herringbone,

It's sewn into
our standard-issue,

dangled under spinnaker

Here,
you and I
will come to terms
the terms of our endearment


a curvature of earthliness,
in miniature exemplified

the surfeit of our inadvertent
vertebrae declined
toward

the wave