It is towards a slow keeping-together of themes
from a missal-thrush memory
that words keen and are made.
                                                   The place matters little:
a furrow of ponds, a wet landscape
curved like a dish, the brittle stare and awkward movement
of spread-eagling duck on a cup of ice –
                                                            what do these matter? unless
the memory keels to the retina a shape of things to come,
teases and minnows them down to a flashing fin
in a chamber of shapeless streams, in a chamber
of crosses and thrushes.