A new poem by Niamh Hollis-Locke.

Field-notes: Midsummer, 9pm, walking barefoot in the reserve after a storm, the sky still light, the city strung out across backs of the hills

 

Dunes of last week’s cut grass

washed downslope against the bracken,

drifts of pale wet stems

rotting into one another,

in to one great wave

 

/ the tidesound of the road / the sweet milkscent of hay /

 

No bugs this evening.

Not because there are none,

Not because they are leaving us

alone – they have all been

rained out of the air,

they are hiding in the long grass

they are biding their time in the dark earth with the stones

and the gas mains

and other things taken for granted.

 

Spraypaint on a treetrunk luminous

in the half-dark. A scatter of moths around the floodlamps

over the astroturf.

Every night I pretend I do not hear the way

the forest overflows with silence,

the sound of absent indicator species

violent, a blade. Underfoot the dirt still

warm as flesh.

 

/ one plane in the pale sky / on the road the cars in their outposts of light /

 

At night the pylons stride across the land,

endlessly,

endlessly.

 

The Friday Poem is edited by Hera Lindsay Bird. Submissions are currently closed.