Imaginary Child
1 She looks out
Again the rain comes
And a thick mist
Both curse and blessing
Accompanies.
The farm kitchen diarrhoeas
small-talk
Jovial and hard faced worries
About ditches, today’s tasks
And amidst all of this facetious
flannel
Comes one lone jewel:
Flood warnings:
Amber alerts
Not for us,
Here on the Cotswold edge,
I see the water
Flow down lanes,
Spurt from field drains
Fill brooks and flood fields,
But ultimately pass away
South by sou’ sou’ west
Bringing others trouble
But not us.
Under our trees
By Breakheart Quarry
We have
Our own alerts.
Shield bugs, ants,
Small beetles
Crawl into crevices
To escape the boulder sized
Rain drops
And are trapped in sap.
Amber Alert.
Two days of rain now
If it continues
Cousins are expected
So rooms cleared, beds made
The range is cloaked from view
By steaming tents of damp sheets
No Bedouin would be made half so
welcome
In this encampment
As would a visitor
Odd booted and hatted
Bringing valley news
and wondrous tales
and precious Amber
Elder brothers,
sometimes fellow dreamers
Though at this precise moment in
my time
with their own precision tooled
remits,
Kick away the high fantastical
And pitch in too.
Fallen trees upstream
A blockage
And standing water spreading
wide.
Axes, grappling hooks and ropes
A small expedition.
It returns safely later, successful,
clothes as wet as sealskin but in
no danger
And a shepherd’s cottage saved.
I serve hot tea and someone says
In passing as it were
“Saw him again today, your man”
a wet and steamy kitchen-full
laughs and moves on:
Animals to feed
A fresh barn leak needs fixing.
I’m gone like an eel from a
bucket
Waterproofed and enraptured
Up the hill
My next move is clear.
Rainproofed letter
under jamjar glass
I leave my incantation
Hanging by waxed thread
From the green willow’s branch
A thought trapped
In living sap
As Amber
If unquiet ghost you be, then
peace
If thing of darkness , then must
you go,
If you mean harm, demand you
cease,
Why are you here, I wish to know
?
Why is it when my mind is clear
That I see you not at all
But when the mist and rain are near
I sense and see you best of all ?
I have both decency and sense
So hope you wont take offense,
If I press and agitate
The reason for your ghostly state
This she wrote and thus she
writes
I found the jam-jar there last
night
Stunned in myself
That someone I dreamed up writes
back
Demanding of me ,as I demand of
her,
Who,what , wherefore and even
when
But especially why.
I pause before I make reply
And breath deeply
As another riddle,
Deeper than my own imagination
Waits in ambush
Under the green willow
Hung with amber.
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