Padeswood

Red eyes, unblinking,         

seek out not prey,

but vain recognition:

‘look at me! I own you;

though you may not know it

as you scoop out your daily share

and spread it ever thin.’

Disappointment, these days,

comes thick and fast,

and nights are the domain

of those who would cast our fears in stone;

the better to remember

what sleep had sought to soften.

The deepest sonority

of time without depth

finds resonance in earthworks

that wear their silence well

(like a velvet cloak, or mariner’s lamp).

The luminescent song of the sirens

hymns the lie of a land

we thought we once knew;

colouring these nightwaves

a deepening red.

Is it blood welling up from the cry of the earth?

or a warning, from the faithful,

of the flood yet to come?

The branch line's been beechinged:

a rail without a way;

some say it was prescience:

a reading of the runes;

others – those pragmatists

who freely inch over

as their despoiler climbs in –

slink their way

towards a futility pact

between solicitous reason

and reckless faith;

swinging a nine iron

where the platform once stood.

Transport steals a more furtive path

now the toxic clamour

has stolen a march

on the concrete cabal

and its kiln-dried bequest.

Clinkered and cankered we

scavenge beneath the towering chrome;   

there's talk of rebellion:

a storming of the perimeter mind;

but as the night shroud descends

and the warning lamps flare,

we hunker down deeper

in the tremulous earth.

 February - March  2012