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

My fear-God, ancient cousins shared the same
house sixty years, a cameo clan
of cat's-pee sofas, mid-sentence naps, surname

a loot recovered when the redskins ran
to twilight generations and the land
was staked for farms. The tom defied Chopin,

sank stretching in the belly of the grand
piano. Shredded cushions testified
to years of lazy claws restyling hand-

embroidered patterns. Portrait oils preside
there still, the features fixed in varnish matt
the centuries of hearth fires craze. The fried

glaze buckles to the grate, a butterfat
of branded looks consumed as caveat.

***

That August, I walked along the clatter
of cornstalks, kicking through the furrow rows
for flints. I stopped, stooped within the tatter

of river meadow ploughed to suit the crows,
examining my finds: the arrow tips
translucent - those serrated edges roes

felt ripping pelt and heart wall - hand-tooled chips
I polished, held to light recalling rites
lost centuries. There is no god equips

us for impermanence. Our lives are kites
of clouds the wind drives out along the air
around us, template for the arrows' flights.

We live to live again, life foursquare
a trophy of the rituals we share.

***

The switcback trail was dry stone walls and pines
I climbed into the day to rest there by
the boundary. The sunken-earth designs

of limestone evidenced a time awry.
Each breach disproved a mended wilderness,
the rock course toppled to the alibi

of ironbar roots and soil-shift. The recess
eroded in the scree was Shawnee, grave
goods woven to a primitive finesse

of spirit dyes' root-reds, each symbol wave
a colour breaking bright in paradise.
The trace was ashen to the touch, the brave

a huddled remnant called to other skies
as life into each echoed life replies.

***

The gravel road along the hillside grows
before me, winding in on drifting dust
among the graves. Abbreviated prose

confirms the terminus of marble flushed
in sunlit pinks. My own name, too, appears,
anticipating resurrection: Trust

in Me, absolving life's delinquent years.
My hand's print on the blush of stone is all
prediction warrants, pending volunteers.

The plastic roses decorate this squall
of dated lives. Their bloom retains a sense
of seasons in a trance, and cannot fall,

or fail to function in a future tense
reserved to reconcile the faintest scents.