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

Air-conditioning shivers your arms
as you drive the bend
into Badlands –
                         scorched air faltering
over clay, sand, volcanic ash:
you could be looking through
an oven door.

The slender peaks
are wind – water sculptures,
geologists say.

But the geometry
of its dark pink markings
is inexhaustible,
an army of layers;
                           the insane pink rings of a snake.

If you flew a small plane
you might see a dozen black dots
lost between knuckles of rock:
                                              suicides stepped off into wilderness;
oubliettes where each turn muffles
in soft ash,
soaking up sound like water.

As you pose for that photo, perched
with your back to reptilian pink,
                                               your shadow thinned to a knife-edge,
hot wind is absorbing your breath
and your face is white with sweat.

You can’t know
how you’ll drive the loop
through tangles of coneflowers,
the dark scrutiny of Lakota,

till you come to a cemetery
fenced off on a black-scrub hill.
The way each plot is anchored
                                               with crystals, pebbles, dried corn
                                               and chokecherries;

the steady rot of berries,
stones, weighing down souls.

And a dreamcatcher
hung on one headstone, filtering
grit,
sustained dreams.
                          As if thoughts give off from the dead
                          like that final growth of hair;
                          a quiet precipitation.