August
Absence.
Cold moon comes down curdling
through reddenin’ leaves,
falling, falling.
✴
Know you every tear in these woods.
Know you every place of good and not-good.
’Tween sleep and wake and bellyache,
each path unhealed and stumpied.
Charkened embers. The end of summer.
Reeve the river’s tongue of silver –
Come away love and leave your wandering…
✴
Just a noiseless noise,
just a gawly girl,
just a bogus boy –
Trapes the fields of feasen
to a chammer of not-sleeping.
Go home now love, leave your wandering…
‘And then there crept /A little noiseless noise among the leaves./Born of the very sigh that silence leaves’ – John Keats, ‘I Stood Upon A Little Hill’; curdling – curling; unheal – uncover; stumpy – to walk with short stamping steps; charken – burn (to charcoal); reeve – to unravel; gawl, gawly – an opening, an empty place, a bare patch, empty, hollow; feasen – faces; chammer – chamber, bedroom, room