and now
and now
and now
and now
and now
and now
and now
and now
and now
and now
and now
tomorrow
it is starting
to leak out of today
a mitotic bubble of posterity
made up of logarithms of ice
under a sun
too hot for time
on a rocking chair listening to the radio of the sky.
The islander stood on worn stone
with a saucerful of his silence,
spilling not a drop.
Drifting spells were broken by a whee-wail-whining sea bird.
Herring Gull.
Has the smell of rain about it, he says of the night,
a night as pitiless as a hearse full of dominoes
pacing towards the cureless collision with sunlight.
There's six peat hags on the back hill
decayed like old ewes’ teeth,
seven lifetimes of peat lie in their tobacco wombs.
Two summers ago I heaved the unsmoked earth
with needled shoulders, dwindling arms
for the last time,
today creels are brittling by the back door
beside knives blunted by tea-strained rain.
I still hear the songs of the cutting squad.
But the undried loam will wait,
wait for soft hands and savages
to enkindle the sky with oranges and reds.
Going up to an idea of north*
to house-sit, seeking reclusion
surrounded by mountains and clear water.
The camera is loaded with big
bullets of light. I’ll use the ice
(I hope there’s a frost), bracken,
the brimming dish as target practice.
Packed and ready, cigars and books.
Have remembered my eagle magnet,
said a prayer to the patron saint
of cloudlessness and stolen moments.
Though if there is any
robbing to be done
it will be by me
daylight of it’s easiness,
the wind of open sails,
wings. Comets and ghosts
of the dark, airwaves
from radios and space
Let me lie in a seven-day grave
stashed in harmony with the soil,
its limbless motion
roots, boots, fallen apples
as the family of silences next door
lip-read the candlelight, pull the curtains
and at the third stroke mute the speaking clock.
* stolen from the first instalment of Glenn Gould’s Solitude Trilogy