Tom Pickard

a mass of moth-eaten cloud threadbare and spun across a bullish moon an animal wakes when I walk in winter, wrapped against a withering wind, solitary, on a Solway flat winter migrants gather in long black lines along a silver sleek heads held back, throats thrust toward an onshore rush occasionally cruciform, static in a flying wind as though in obeisance to the sea retracing steps washed out by whimpering silt each tide a season in the pecking mall they call as I approach, an upright spelk on their shelf, gathering my notes and theirs we scavenge ahead of our shadows waiting for what the tide brings in or leaves out purple, hedged cloud edged gold hung on silver slates of sand diverted leaps of light surrender water risen from rivulets roughed from rage repealing waves repeat a curlew’s estuary echo who, but you and the wind’s wake?

you gave me a white rose put the lamp on the stove it caught fire the I Ching said thunder above the lake lightning in Baker Street switched on the cooker and blew a fuse blue flash you see the whole experience is electric

simplicity say sleep or shall we shower have an apple you are as I need water shall I move? do you dream? shallow snow flesh melt this

what we have is what there is and who we are and who we is is love

walking up John Street thinking of you I saw a slash of sea between houses and felt — as always, no matter mood, its or mine — as though it was the source of language and language the source of itself

When my lover became my enemy I made my bed amongst winds and drove the old road ’till my heart crashed. Where’s the bypass? Washing my shirts, wringing them out. Hung in the breeze. Water skips undressed over outcrops. What it says is. Wind, roots in rock. Lying on Long Tongue, sun diffused in mist. Easy sleep without waking. Edge of displaced echoes air around and sound of  bird and ’plane A swallow’s glittering chitter.

I forgot forget amnesia was lost to me then a smooth fur-free fruit unnamed for days until I found it ripe on my tongue

1 a wren, perched on a hawthorn low enough to skip the scalping winds, sang a scalpel song seafrets drift sheer along shorelines listening to hail spray glass and wind and a waitress laugh in a cafe without customers I fell to fell thinking * * * a sullen light through vapor thins a line of hills the edge of everything is nothing whipped by wind watched on a webcam bound to a bedpost gag on my shaft rose blush of road-kill rabbit insides out on tarmacadam * * * cumulus in a tarn its fast shadow flees far hills a wave of sleek grass skiffs mist my hand thought of her a photograph waiting to happen * * * this come-to-kill wind rips at the root here she comes and there she goes rushes bow to rime I should shut down close off stop if I could how quick the mist how quick 2 my lover, the assassin, is beautiful she has come to kill me and I concur just now she sleeps but when she wakes I’m dead her eyelids flitter as I prepare her potions, her delicious poisons * * * as she flew past a lick of her melodic nectar stuck to my wing, making flight, for an instant, sticky but nothing preening couldn’t fix * * * she asked about my heart, its evasive flight; but can I trust her with its secrets? and does the merlin, in fast pursuit of its prey, tell the fleeing lark it is enamored of its song? or the singing lark turn tail and fly into the falcon’s talons? * * * my heart, the cartographer, charts to the waterline, is swept back as the tide turns wiping the map blank, wave after moon-drawn wave but it beats, my heart, of its own volition a lark sings winds rush reeds walking home I stride these tracks with her tread the blurred thumbprint of a smudged moon 3 it has gone on for days strumming rushes taking up tales, taking them on the fall of my foot, on tufts a stroke of light along a law lain in under a long cloud I accrete—lichen to limestone sphagnum to peat * * * late shadows gather in the dark words unwrite as they are written unspeak as they are spoken songs sprung from heart and lung to tongue unsung * * * drunk winds stumble over shuffling roofs shake his sleep who dreams a lost love will not let go recurring swirls of old gold blown light you can’t help but be in it as it opens and falls back on itself unfolds and unsays I do not want to die without writing the unwritten pleasure of water

at first they recce, easy, around the edge of  breath then gathered gangs unleash and breach but the wind has no objective, riding the slope of my roof

A lapwing somersaults spring flips over winter and back. After a fast walk up long hills, my limbs the engine of  thought, where burn bubbles into beck and clough to gill, beneath a sandstone cliff  balanced on a bed of shale and held from hurtling by Scots pine that brush a scrubby sky with cloud snow scutters, I found a place to sit by snapping watta smacking rocks and wondered — how would it be for you? And so, alone, un-alone even, in my anger, bring you here.