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Along the rough lane leading down to the pond the grass is on fire with sunset, the sky slashed with streaks of primary and paint-box colours, a chaotic fleece shot through with lightning, thunder , solar winds and noctilucent clouds where the fat man's mouth lost in its many chins has swallowed his voice and is choking on it. His foot falters over the last step and he jolts into emptiness, falls like a plane's floor suddenly dropping away into the sky's hollow, passengers' heads and all the carry-on baggage hitting the ceiling, tearing their minds apart in earth and sky, shattering
the quiet world of plants as they lean forward attentively, sensing the oscillations of air as a sound wave passes, the ripples of greenhouse gas gusting out of our mouths as we confide in them and the magnetic strip of our nearness slotting in like a credit card . .
A boy's head is emerging from the rose hedge wearing its straggly branches like a crown of thorns as he hastens off to buy yardages of time like cloth, and books to plug the gaps on his library shelves, assuaging his horror of emptiness . .
But the universe - white dwarfs and supernova, planets, gravel paths, grass, stars and rabbit-droppings, the twisted boles of elms lumpy and warted, the smoke of bonfires or the burnt pizza you left in the oven last night, the small pond's water-lilies hiding the orange lights of carp not yet extinguished by the heron's throat - is mostly space, all the grades of solidity largely a matter of how easily their contained particles can jump about, the difference between slim and obese children, crowded or uncrowded together, skipping across the hardness of a playground
while you sit, almost asleep, picking the sores of regret to stop them healing. After this nano-instant — now — nothing is certain.
Letter
to a doll: Dear Ruby, Do you know I go to school I get on very well with my sums at school and I will taceyou out for a walk again soon and we are going a way for the august holidays. From Pat
Each letter’s sans serif and avant garde. They’re groups of children standing side by side and passing messages by signs, not touching.
In half a year I will be five. My brother’s learning how to do joined-up. He’ll make the letters hold each other's hands and dance. The Hill
across the backway and the tussocked grass is like the mountain made of glass that Princes had to climb to rescue their Princess from trolls
and dragons. Peter's been told to hold my hand. He does it much too hard, grinding my knuckles up against each other.
'Mothers and Fathers' is the game we're playing on the far side hidden from mummies' eyes spying from upstairs windows. We lie together
with a space between. The dry grass itches up against my legs, the ground is hard. The Prince and his Princess lived happy ever after.
What did they do? It never said except when princes were bewitched and looked like frogs or hedgehogs. That August holiday
is never taken. The bonds too natural even to be realised are broken. And Ruby’s different. The two-way flow between us has been ended.
Her long-lashed lids roll down to cover glass. It makes her blind. Her narrow two-toothed smile Stays fixed whatever happens,
and now when Peter twists her jointed knees to turn them back to front I do not even shout — Stop that! You'll hurt her!
A deer reflected in a kitchen window sees but does not recognise itself inside the kitchen
It stayed in my mind how the deer browsing the grass outside the kitchen window raised its head and blinked and scratched its ear with its hind hoof, how then its eyes latched on another deer facing it not far distant, how they ambled towards each other, snorted, how nose touched nose and drops of moisture fixed themselves rigid in the air before them as they stood still, searching each other's eyes like window-dressings
wondering perhaps how this transparent creature sharp as an image through a Judas window could hold so much inside it: movements spirit-thin of flowers, clouds, trees transposed between brick walls, a flame appearing underneath a saucepan.
The invisible man is taking off his clothes. A picture on the wall shows faintly through him; light stretches its width across the curtained window; a chair, a polished table rise out of the Persian carpet — and the room is empty
save for one aspect where the air is sensitive and shadows linger. Your depleted ‘I’ hangs like a ghost changing the visual aspect of the world as the king-god’s eye stares at the sun and sees itself reflected in a burning mirror. And if it stares too long it will be blinded
like the sixteenth-century pilots taking their navigation readings from the sun. This vulnerable ‘I’ cries to be snatched free of the torrent of the fourth-dimensional river raping its banks, sludging its mud
over the animate shadows of children throwing a ball to each other, winding their leapings down to ballet dancers in slow motion. Only when continents drift over the viscous mantle of the globe, drawn together like lovers, rumpling the Indian plains
pushing them up like the skirt of a dress in summer, will the land turn snow-peaked and pregnant with magma. Fig-leaves encrypt the secret evidence of man's desire . .
As ‘i’ you are as real and as ephemeral as time. Beneath the vulnerability of your closed lids, imagination is the greater reality.
Pat Earnshaw commended in the Pitshanger Poets Competition, 2008
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