Figures in a Landscape: A Triptych

I

A peroxide moment in the smudge of charcoal moor

blanches the silence that smothers and buries.

The punctum purge of history-made-myth

seeps from eyes that look not out

but up at those behind the lens

whose presence, like a stain,

seeps deep into the earth

of her blackening soul.

II

A procedural fan of the bowed and the bidden

comb heather and peat as the children hide

and the bog men lay quiet as the grave.

On cumulus grey earth tread feet booted

and weighted like punnets of soil,

the lumber of terrain that gives

up its ghosts as the years

and the mud fall away.

III

A wind-sythed knoll in the shadow of a day

that refuses to break: out there, beyond

the conurbated gloom of a city astir,

where the hoe meets the grain

of a passion spent, and broken

young bones lie bleached and

untroubled as the brook that

doesn't shine babbles on.

July 2013