The river racer, foam of sulphur,
Is dart and shivered mercury.
A scattered feather, pitched in peat,
Which whisks the water’s surface clean.
A never still, a bobbing weave,
A flight and dance, a flip of tail,
Its tick tricks time, alarmed and shrill,
Is chasing after waterfalls.
Then up and gone on undulations:
A shallow trace of wings and air;
A shadow left on deeper reaches;
A moment’s fire of fight and life.
And left, a woodland’s damp is hanging,
Awaiting echoes from the streams.
The opposite of deaf is deaf.
The screeching spines inside your head,
The spiral labyrinth of drills,
Igniting spikes of sound and pain.
The lances pierce your amygdala.
Your lizard mind lies whining back.
The neurone contours spit and flail.
The opposite of deaf is deaf
At night the echo pins are pricked
To vent the agonies of angels
Through precision points of diamond.
And every slightest scratch sets off
A pulse of blood to silence words.
When deaf the noises never stop.
You take a step, the Earth slips back.
It’s never fair, it never is,
But just in case you didn’t know:
In your eyes I see my life.
The sadnesses which came before,
The solitary walks at night,
The sleeping rough besides the cliffs
Were never yours: you gave me life.
I measure out the speeding years
Like feet and inches on a wall:
Each notch another pain or joy.
And so our Earth is spinning by
And again, in case you weren’t aware,
In your life there lies the point.
We shivered out on millstone grit,
And wished we’d brought our second coats,
As April mocked arriving swifts
With possibilities of Svalbard.
We walked together through the ice,
Together warmed the air with song,
A choir of voices chimed as one
To fire the glowing embers.
A pallid sun began to seep
Through mists around the moorland tops,
And lit our path through crumbling walls
Of ancient homes and memories.
We marched beneath those screaming swifts,
With nothing left but numbers.
