In Twigs Nor Sky

This selection of wee poems moves through English countryside, from winter into spring. There are so many forgotten gods & demons hiding in England’s landscapes ... and now – after the great ‘transformation’ caused by a tiny dangerous organism, and as our planet’s weathers change ever more quickly – these presences – through all earth’s landscapes – seem to be becoming more noticeable again. Cow keck is another name for cow parsley, or what is also known as ladies’ lace – in summer, its abundance of creamy flower-heads often line the verges of roads & lanes, whilst in winter, cow parsley dries into grey angular skeleton-like structures. Pussy willows are the furry catkins of the goat willow. Through summer, bracken is often a rampant mass of thick green, whereas in early spring – after wintering – it is reduced to dry stalks.

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a way off grey

wire barbed
at a wood’s edge 

scritches

in a grey
breeze 

rubbed against
by one  

aluminium wraith  

of dead
cow keck
 

a wet winter-twig of

time

this drop at
twig- 

         tip

between the smoke
of frosted woods 

and the harrowed field’s
solid mottle 

at a border of pale

 and scratched cross
-crissed iced grasses 

a perfect crystal has
snapped  

free and is

swiftly making space with
the shape  

of hare

curled rust leaf

held at
twig-end one 

of air’s em

pty

shoes

pussy willow’s
little pelts  

gleaming hung
up by 

spring’s hunt

twisted copper

bracken crackling and
shaking as six 

star-eyed

fox cubs
rummage