After A Walking Meditation
On One's Own Death:
Three Poems And An Invisible Limerick.
Obviously you find distractions:
the sun
the breeze
crass memories of the French girl's arse.
Obviously you find ways
to turn aside from what lies ahead.
The burial ground stares at the river:
the river stares back
and you decide up here
is a better place to be than down there
waiting to cross.
***
There are three birds, gra mo chroi, three.
The first tastes the wind like a diffident lover,
Is nudged by her in the right direction.
The second jitters jagged, zig-zagged, spasmodic and scared.
The third just flies.
Can I sketch the bend in the Dart?
Can I sing a song about a graveyard on a hill?
I sit, Ted Hughes and my father peering over my shoulder,
As a woodpigeon creaks its purring, smoky nonsense,
Repeats the call-call-call I heard in my small room
Back when the world bewildered more than now,
Back when I wandered an Essex campsite
And realised that, just as I’d found a self, I had separated.
A woman once told me we give birth to our own parents
But, like my father, I’m easily distracted
And a wending white canoe
Twists my head away from The Breath.
This place is lovely, yes, but it’s not beautiful.
For beauty we need nobility, intimidation,
Awe and a sex so powerful
The bend in the river straightens.
This place is merely a record you like,
A girl you quite fancy,
This place is sweet and nice and soft.
The vigour of this place was buried when all the men came.
Feet apart, poised, targeting.
We take photos because our guns are long silenced.
Each time we press the button, a little death.
Each time, an invented soul is captured.
No place for a woman.
I think this and then I think about the Thai monks
And how we resist what is
And how that’s all we need to learn. All.
There are three birds, gra mo chroi, three.
The first tastes the wind like a lover,
Is nudged by her in the right direction.
The second jitters jagged, zig-zagged, spasmodic and scared.
The third just flies.
***
Afterwards I poach an egg, light a fire
And I dig furrows for produce I’ll never see.
The trowel leaves something like stigmata
And we all find that funny.