Tom Barwell is a poet, psychotherapist and proud footstool for two Havanese dogs.
a new encounter at the creek
the snowdrops are small gravestones,
crowded into tight-walled churchyards
on the creek’s fronded headlands
and slowcurrent pebble bays.
here a crooked
twig floats down and rests,
a wanderer dislodged from
the great beech upstream,
ridden on inevitability to this quiet place,
where thick mud finds company
with yews and wet grasses.
the burial-lands and church
stand abreast on the cliffs, amid
the reeds and mist,
tipped toward this mercurial stream,
as if their answer lay in between,
and solemnity had sprouted
each knowing head in passing.
while a purple crocus shouts
i’m here, in love,
these near stillborn humilities,
shoulders hunched,
green necked into the wind,
lest the ice-rain,
are muted, secret places.
the landscape hears their nonetheless song,
that snow’s ungripping hand will one
day ease, and shovels left long without work—
to rise without heat,
without knowing whether all might cease,
without boast nor colour,
as sure as we are in grief.
white as bone,
starving nuns,
barefoot in the ice-gutter—and wordless
on we float—away to an echoing bell,
each year and yard
we pass so simply placed,
perhaps by knowing hand
© Tom Barwell