Stone

Hard as ribs to the touch,

quartz veins curve

on its surface. Erosion

has settled shape that cannot

be split at a pulse.

The crush coheres,

hollows the flesh of my hand

where blood flow slows

to an ache. It fits my palm

as though it were born there,

skin-stretcher, smoothed by

the wash of a distant sea.

Sure in its heft, it endures

the evolution of fingers,

the continuation of bone.

St Anthony’s Chapel

 


Ruins close in

as you reach the arch,

blocking its hold

to the upper wall.

You nod at the prospect

of suburbs and river.

“Not the best view,” you say.

“Not worth the effort.”

Watched swans plunge

to the loch below,

a concord of flight

in their search for food

as we track back

the way we have come.

The path tips to a gully,

mud slips under my feet

In the Shadows

All day the solstice wore grey:

we withdraw to the deep night

where bone drops from bone

into the cooling places.

Food falls from our hands. Straw.

Life has not lived at this table

since the sprung god died,

grapes turned blood on his tongue.

Stripped for the pit all these years,

we suffer a scourge in each raw cut,

the void a smell in every festering.

There is no help in us.

We crumble on bedrock,

do not greet the disordered dark,

nor feed the god descending

 from our crooked stars.