" title="Brittle Star David M Garnett
Roads stretch
– the humming teeth of the country.
Hillocks and tufts dwindle beyond scope
and dry moor grasses rise more steeply,
where acquisitive sheep with stick black
legs run, or stand munching on brilliant
explosions of blades of grass, the old ram
looking fiercely, its rotating jaw providing
for its future as bullocks drape their
strength, greater than any man’s – the
lions of the fields, and crows, shedding
their green turds, spread large pointed wings,
hauling their feathers up to their hot, black
tree top factories, where indefinite bits of
living matter get crammed down the throats
of young birds, who caw at the sky, the
clouds settling along the sky’s edge and
the ageless blue awnings, that calm thought;
thought, containing potential dawns and long quiet
evenings, when small birds panic their way
from twig to worm to tarmac and the night sun
hardly moves, but spreads its pink arms over
the hill tops.
The night sky swells with light, pouring whiteness, and
constellations are spliced together among too many stars
to name.
We drive down to the noisy town and the tyrannical aspect
of traffic lights.
Hillocks and tufts dwindle beyond scope
and dry moor grasses rise more steeply,
where acquisitive sheep with stick black
legs run, or stand munching on brilliant
explosions of blades of grass, the old ram
looking fiercely, its rotating jaw providing
for its future as bullocks drape their
strength, greater than any man’s – the
lions of the fields, and crows, shedding
their green turds, spread large pointed wings,
hauling their feathers up to their hot, black
tree top factories, where indefinite bits of
living matter get crammed down the throats
of young birds, who caw at the sky, the
clouds settling along the sky’s edge and
the ageless blue awnings, that calm thought;
thought, containing potential dawns and long quiet
evenings, when small birds panic their way
from twig to worm to tarmac and the night sun
hardly moves, but spreads its pink arms over
the hill tops.
The night sky swells with light, pouring whiteness, and
constellations are spliced together among too many stars
to name.
We drive down to the noisy town and the tyrannical aspect
of traffic lights.
Page(s) 32-33
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