A kind of god
A fallen trunk holds back a stagnant pool
the flow continuing beneath a surface
tiger-skinned with river-froth,
a mantle fixed as islands on a globe.
In the dog-leg of a bough, relax.
Consider the passing sky
and how the clouds invisibly uncurl.
Hands clamped to wood,
notice in the trunk's up curve
how a twigjam stanches flood,
keeps peace in this pacific.
The tip of a twig lips a delicate
meniscus on this quiet side,
or in your hand can save a drowning wasp
who claws hook-fisted at his sodden head,
flexes the hurt abdomen.
Or the same hand lent to water rends the dam.
Unstanched, the lazy archipelagos unwind
and bubble atolls catching currents
slip beneath the branch.
Know the sleek stick in the hand,
a kind of tinpot god or cortez, and
under a cloud-ribbed sky
feel this is peace.
The stick thrust dreaming to the river-bed
makes a mud-storm billow up and break,
raises a slow explosion that lifts
a plume of dirt in that other world,
while continents may drift by overhead.
Page(s) 27
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The