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

Dick’s up front with the lantern:  a wink of light
Against indigo sky, where stars blink back.
A yellowy pool dapples his feet;
And I’m behind (for safety), my boots, too, haloed in gold.
Between us, jauntily forging the waves of night
Through mists fed from valleys to hang stranded on hawthorn,
His twelve cows, slow rollers, straggle the hill road.

Towards the moon that hugs the lemon-edged horizon
They shamble sadly, their spines sagging under each slowing
Load.  Their hooves clack emptily on the tarmac;
Haunches jar up, then down; heads hover;
And mouths, shush-crunching cud, drag the aroma
Of grass through air that takes their breath away.
Amber stars gleam where beams catch their eye.
Beneath barrelled backs scratched out of half-light
Flanks tauten and judder under their mournful lowing.

As we climb, my lamp unwinds rusty coils of brambles,
Lights up the foxglove’s spotted mantles, finds grass
Already angelicaed where frost crisps the verge.

A late moth bumps clumsily against the glass.
Somewhere away - Hill’s Wood? - owls whoo and moan.

Soon be in.

            (When we reach the gate, just at the end of this hedge,
            While Dick takes the cows down to the byre
            With its sweet-wet scent of tumbled straw,
            I cross the yard, go indoors, light candles
            And, with bundles of lumpy logs, mend his fire.)

Soon be home

Lamps and boots off, hugging the hearth for warmth
While outside, bats dance in the drum of the moon.