Hunter's Moon (20/10/21)
/ The Music of What's Not There
15/01/22
Heart-sweat. Cold ice. Breath. Light plays across the horizon.
I wait in trepidation
for the gift
Dark heart of the Dart. Tangled hair and moonlight.
Blackbird trapped
in the glasshouse.
16/01/22
Wake up.
Wake up.
Before I know it I’m outside. Concrete beneath my feet. Abandoned school to my left. I run past the astroturf pitch, past the single trainer hung to the fence by its laces. Down the bank of mud and tree root.
The trees are filled with birdsong. Blue sky tucked beneath crow’s wing.
River:
how far have you travelled to meet us?
The message of yesterday in heel trodden mud.
Pontoon covered in ice.
18/01/22
Hidden heart between the trees
train passes along the far bank of the river
My own heart suspended above water.
Creak of rope swing. Body enters
the singing roof of waves
vast tent of the sky
seagulls adrift
in sunlight.
19/01/22
I run down the bank and onto the footpath. A bike’s lights cut through the mist.
Sylvan shadows cast beneath my feet.
Tom and Leon stretch at the rivers edge. I take my spot next to them. A lone swan watches.
I wash the cuts of sleep
in the bruise-black waters.
20/01/22
No swan today. No people. Only the three of us and the glass eye of the river.
Moonlight burns beneath the feet.
I swing off the rope.
Let the call of birdsong enter me. Let the cold air enter me. Let the water wash over me.
I swallow the darkness of the Dart.
Buoyed to a distant memory, I float.
21/01/22
Out the back door. Across the busy road. Down the slope of the carpark. Follow the bend of tarmac past the abandoned school and the leafless oak.
A waning gibbous moon hangs
in a tracing-paper-thin-sky
trees yet to step out
of their silhouettes
lean towards
the Dart
I peel my clothes off.
Swing off the rope.
The world is quieter beneath the waves.
23/01/22
At the pontoon is a father and daughter in ankle length puffer jackets. The father is hunched above the water. Left hand holding a thermometer. He tells me the water is 7.2 degrees. 7.2 seems warm. I think what it would be like to swim between the seven and the two…
[to be continued...]
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