Rory Waterman

It lists beneath a sycamore swashing in high summer leaf, and takes a hit from underneath: a root knuckle bulges along the floor. Its eight loopholes have fissures, sprouting thistles; through each the wheat is fattening. “What’s this thing for?” A starling sings its wind-up song. The sun slides out. And this taste of piss, that Fetherlite slumped in the corner, those Holsten cans, the markered slogan do not try to answer. Might.

The truck grinds by and pumps out grit; the road glints and goes still. The barn owl that had not finished here returns. But with its fill of scavenges, face ruffled in mulch, the vole is lost and safe so the silent specter flits away, its moon face to the moon and rears unknown against a copse, claws tipped for the strafe and something dies too soon.

They found a man in the shrub that shields our lane — one fat white hand not tucked in the pit — and cordoned off a patch. We had nothing to explain it but The Post. And now the ground’s restrewn with tins and crisp bags; sleet jiggles the ivy; the blackbirds bob from floor to bole as each dull dusk settles in. And coming back at night we get on too, quickening to the safety lights, through shadows of  gates that thrust across the grit.