Lache Eyes
I
world no longer turning
like it did when fire
rained down from the sky
and cars stacked up along
dynamic hard shoulders
bound for cities that are
smarter than smart
like everything else
under the spiralling sun
I reach out but you are not there
or here or wherever it is we are
behind doors that remain closed
we breathe the lilac perfume of our thoughts
as if the contagion were only physical
to purge is to be human
is what I tell myself
when the desire to reboot
outpaces the need to remain
in the flesh of your suffering
during snatches of outside
when running the gauntlet of applause
that is not mine
things fall out of range
and are no longer syncing
I tumble like Doug and Tony
the faint line of my ghosting
passes unnoticed through Iache eyes
and I slip outside of this time
II
where Boundary Lane curves
into the sandy shallows of a homeland
we've pledged to find
when the water table rises
the border ploughs on
across fields and drains
into a pool of softly spoken rushes
tall tales
smugglers and pilgrims
ferrying night's cargo
between stations of the locked-down day
from isolation to solitude stolen
weighing the murmur of the slumberous dead
the leech coil of spring
pulls limbs from the causeway
we share an embrace that straddles the ages
like groundwater passing through rock
or the alveoli of chanced-upon clearings
where voices come and go in the suspect wind
I can breath
I can breath
expressway traffic has thinned to nothing
birdsong spans the air like a cathedral arch
and prayers take flight in the spaces left empty
all the world is contained herein
we chart a passage through to Balderton
then buffer in the slipstream
of our rebooted lives
August 2020
LACHE, Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. Also written laych Chs.; leech Lan. Chs. (also latch; lach; lack; laich; leach; leche; letch). 1. A pond; a pool; a muddy hole; a puddle. 2. A swamp, a quagmire; a ‘dub’; a wet mass; a long narrow swamp in which water moves slowly among rushes and grass. 3. An occasional watercourse; a narrow ditch; a deep cart-rut.
LACHE EYES, drained marshland on the Flintshire-Cheshire border, Saltney, Dee Estuary. [see The Sands of Dee]
© Les Roberts 2016. All Rights Reserved.