A Field in England
Your hands lower me into a gentle pool of sleep
I sink like a peat turf returned to the earth
the beckett that cut me
hangs over the fireplace
a paddle or a bat
to play games out in the summer fields
or to push us through waters black
as summer berries left to soak until winter.
The slumberous weight of ages
pulls me down into chambers
hewn from the bedrock
where I roam unencumbered
by the light of the sun
to a place where bog men and women
whisper their flattened tales
to anyone prepared to listen.
The distance between worlds
is as great or as small as that
between the eyelets of the boots
I lace in the hall's half-light.
Beyond the vaulted threshold
tundra flowers drip their muted colours
into the pillars and escarpments
of Europe after the rain.
Decalcomania sheets billow and arch
in wind that tears in from the coast
plying salt upon the lips
of pilgrims who lie coiled
in the gullies of a landscape
that strains at its moorings
as if a ship bound for spoils
that lie buried in the new land.
A marsh lamp beckons.
That I know not to follow
nor care where it leads
is the awful measure of this place.
Shoals gather and I swim
with the best of them
but with a flicker it is gone
and I wake to find myself
lost in a field in England
and so very far from home.
January 2020
© Les Roberts 2016. All Rights Reserved.