In the tickling, shadow-lilted
vocations of lady ferns, we
see a mess of scrubbed bark
shimmer-scurry in stubbornly
unleafing gales of black mulberry,
But yesterday, the curl-of-shell
campion flickeringly untamed
above Monks Bay, brought me
the light napes, the muzzle
of mushroom’s crushed
tenderness outlying the
fields of winter squash
near the Swainstone hedges.
And now the mauve tinder
swirl of tamarisk adjacent
to the sessile oak and sheer
white flamelet-stems of un-
numbered cyclamen, shows
the chequer-shaded wrist
of petals we saw in
fritillaries of Easter fog,
I think, in Salisbury.
I only walked for helpless
rage at Gaza’s grief, intuiting
displaced light in split lichen.
In the shuffle of guelder leaves
before lucent beads redden,
I forgot the words, almost,
for collective punishment, for
concentration camp; for Shoah
and Nakba.