Matins
I
The car gives Perthshire the glad-eye
of sun, light frailing the birches' banjo,
accelerates pulse of the knolls
to cinnamon.
A crow detaches from the warm road
chack! starring my windscreen
and the bauble of my soul.
Ten black fingers fold.
A crow falls back
to the dawn-damp road.
II
I drive. All life dodges me.
The early lambs, a cockpheasant
down a furrow.
A horse bends its neck
like a blown brown sail
as I hit along the skittish shore.
And though I race a train
and here it pitches boatly
on the rails
sun plucks at my eyelids,
red rigs stick in the Firth
like stings.
III
here’s a place cracked open to the sky like a dollshouse, here’s short reeds glossy as a newshaved head. Cat’s cradle of pylons, pylons’ shrinking ancestral tree, whatever, we’re swung about on the electrical line. A cloud crushed over the forestry, some flossy rain, a tarry taffy choppy loch. Black and white eyebrows raised at the train’s mad canter.
IV
I drive. The spicy northern moor,
the Caithness ranches, a raunchy sky,
where wooden fences rot like molars.
Its flank, piebald, currycombed.
A smooth path like a tapeworm.
The blue mountains blistering up.
The car gives Perthshire the glad-eye
of sun, light frailing the birches' banjo,
accelerates pulse of the knolls
to cinnamon.
A crow detaches from the warm road
chack! starring my windscreen
and the bauble of my soul.
Ten black fingers fold.
A crow falls back
to the dawn-damp road.
II
I drive. All life dodges me.
The early lambs, a cockpheasant
down a furrow.
A horse bends its neck
like a blown brown sail
as I hit along the skittish shore.
And though I race a train
and here it pitches boatly
on the rails
sun plucks at my eyelids,
red rigs stick in the Firth
like stings.
III
here’s a place cracked open to the sky like a dollshouse, here’s short reeds glossy as a newshaved head. Cat’s cradle of pylons, pylons’ shrinking ancestral tree, whatever, we’re swung about on the electrical line. A cloud crushed over the forestry, some flossy rain, a tarry taffy choppy loch. Black and white eyebrows raised at the train’s mad canter.
IV
I drive. The spicy northern moor,
the Caithness ranches, a raunchy sky,
where wooden fences rot like molars.
Its flank, piebald, currycombed.
A smooth path like a tapeworm.
The blue mountains blistering up.
Page(s) 41
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