Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

At first we can’t find the footpath.
We cut past a barn and an old trough;
the field beyond is pocked with daggy sheep
but you press on; you know it’s here somewhere.
Behind the sewage works I’m caught
by nettles and thorns. There is an antidote
but I can’t stop to look, as you’re ahead
with bags and rods and maps. There’s only the thrum
of the river, in your ear, as you tut me on.

Scene: a field. Bill pours out flask tea,
choosing lurid lures and snipping things
with scissors from a little nylon bag
while he kneels in the grass over hooks and wires.
A shadow cuts like a gill-line under his jaw.
His mouth opens and shuts in concentration.
It’s strange how his colouration seems to change
when he assumes his place down in the reeds
among the gnats and dragonflies, in high waders,
and Polaroids and a green shirt ‘not to scare the fish.’
His eyes are an electric, scaly blue.

Across the field, a conical flint tower,
fishscale-shingled, with a metal flag
on top of it: the stolid townsman’s fly.
God is love. This isn’t the kind of place
for miracles. The flag stands over a garden;
I wander under an arbour to read the lichencovered
headstones of the village strangers,
a kind of conversation I’m holding with time.

It’s taken hours to be quiet. And it takes years
to be really dead, judging from the flowers.
Something moves and I notice a wooden door;
a kneeling countrywoman tending lavender.
I shut the gate-latch softly, so she can’t hear.
My hand hurts. When I rub it, stings appear.

Kate! You call, and thrash through the brush.
In your hands a stripy little perch
hyperventilates. He doesn’t look at us.
You trace his dorsal fin, thin as a wing,
and describe it. He swishes his tail. His scales are tight,
and his underside is a fleshy yellow.
You look up. Our eyes meet, and you take him
back to the river and then disappear.