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Keith Chandler

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Much More than Love

                                   I love a winter walk
over the burnt-out ruins of the land,
where only a broken cow-parsley stalk,
like ditch-thrown king, attempts to raise a hand;
and day seems more a refugee of night
than what it was, the glorious son of sun,
wrapping itself in ragged warmthless light,
its head a bleeding bandage going down.
And nothing happens, but a squad of rooks
rise mutinous over a distant ridge,
or where the furrows give out into brooks
like polka dots a minuet of midge
hangs on. So we pass aimlessly
following the extant ramblings of a road,
remarking here and there a fallen tree
or where a turnip-cart has slipped its load . . .
until the closing sky and clamping cold
make even the odd thought like these just so much
frozen breath, and our tight fingers’ hold
seems forged by something more like death than touch.
When all the world from the last crack to here
has turned from gold to brown to prussian blue
and stars like pinball lights pulse in the air
and from a thornbush slyly into view
steps the white queen, we head for home
having got nowhere and from nowhere come.

 

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