Julian May
Bold Reynardine
The best night of the century for shooting starts...
except that fog was general all over Greenwich;
up at the Observatory there was nothing to be seen
beyond the nails of my outstretched hands, pale
as the moons of Jupiter.
By the river
I lay down on the wall, watcher of the skies. A faint
stain fading in the east: just the bucket of fire
that flares high over the refinery. The night
jaundiced with sodium lights
was turning sour.
The news wryly smiled at the crisis: a national shortage
of frogs. Our damp islands pant, bruised and exhausted.
Then you rocketed by, singeing my knee
in the thrust of the afterburner
of your brush.
You stopped, turned, gave me the eye: I’ll cut your purse;
lay waste the hen ark; some night crack
the secret of the way into the wheelie bin.
Then flashed like a shooting star back
into the cosmos.
These days we are so many; the sad-eyed and tired. Yet
the Allis shad has found its way back up the Medway
and no redcoat harries you with savage hounds in town.
There is still wisdom to be found; still growing wild.
I keep my eyes fixed firmly on the ground.
Page(s) 48
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