Over the Heath
The truck grinds by and pumps out grit; the road glints and goes still. The barn owl that had not finished here returns. But with its fill of scavenges, face ruffled in mulch, the vole is lost and safe so the silent specter flits away, its moon face to the moon and rears unknown against a copse, claws tipped for the strafe and something dies too soon. |
He filled her between the hay bales in that Dutch barn, now abandoned, where the wind catches its breath in the stanchions, air gun holes. Then they sprang up light and lightsome and she tugged his hand with her hand as the breeze pulled at the poppy heads and rabbits shrank round boles. But how soon he’d grow indifferent as the tick she couldn’t see that was part of her for longer than he would choose to be. |
Copyright Credit: This poem was published in Tonight the Summer's Over (Carcanet, 2013).
Source: Poetry (October 2014)