Estill Pollock
Calculating pi
Above the forest
a sky of stars rubs gold against blackened blues.
By the roadside a dog fox, retinae swimming
with near-miss headlights, turns, disappearing then
nonchalantly through nettles and a tuck of ferns.
The dirty orange brush paces chance, each tail flick
stiff with luck.
Later, the car returns, the same car, and you the same
and again the glassy stare, again
a rough sleekness of fox gait
then nothing.
In this version, the car slows, stopping,
engine idling on a backroad known only to locals.
How do you know this road, you, a stranger here?
As you wait, the car dissolves around you,
in its place a smear of gluey molecules
and, just faintly now, the car radio –
electromagnetic echo
above bubbling tarmac. Only now do you recall
the choices you made, the journey.
There are no witnesses, no-one writing this down.
A thousand years have passed, where the road was
now genesis, a craze of oak roots
replacing the map to town, or anywhere
you thought to exit or arrive. Above the forest
a sky of stars rubs fox bark against the darkness.
The sound shapes itself to your mouth,
quickens.
Page(s) 117-118
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