Usually I prefer the image to go off the edges of the panel,
for it to be larger than the space I can capture it in. - Gary Hume

The brain is a
soaked cabbage, its
iters ancient
mazes beneath
new gloss of orbits
gentle in dark
magenta space.

Why are this world’s
edges so close?

Below, nothing
else interrupts;
we nearly fall
off the old thought
into color,
a race of slaw
slowly watching
its own wrinkles
age, age into
forever’s frame.

Shropshire, England, 1983

First, the silence. Then, the green
of poplars in a row like a solemn waiting chorus,
motionless. The wood-and-wire fences,
brick wall: borders marking edges. A silent Severn,
wet line seen through boughs.

At first. Then, the leaves
at the top of poplars, waving in a slight breeze.
Fresh cow dung, dried dung, green grass,
dry weeds. Purple and white flowers.
A wildness uncontained by fences.

Down the path, shadows of dusk
lead on to the River. The Severn moves
in a gentle way: an angler’s plunk,
the call of a pigeon, ripples
of far-off cars, ferns mixed
with brambles and mushrooms.

Walking up the bank, pushing
aside branches and brambles to find
the path, its steps. Emerging
over the fence again. Cows graze,
moving little. Voices from the house
break the quiet that is not silence.
Green darkens into the Shropshire night.
Footsteps through the cultivated fields
that grown in this wildness of nature.

I take a deep breath of the country
before opening the door, going inside,
and beginning to write.

She tells me it’s like the halos of saints
preceding the onset, then a nightlight
too bright to endure.
                                            Rolled up in old sheets
the color of fever and a blanket
as blue as cobalt, she shades her eyes from
as much of the world as she is willing
to acknowledge.
                        Her words are pained, careful
as feet near the deteriorating
half-way crumble on the Kalalau Trail,
afraid of how deep any fall may go,
how unsteady the climb back up,
                                                              broken,
                                                                              borne.
Pills sort it all out within one, two days,
and she grogs back to normal paths.
                                                              Later,
she tells me, this time wasn’t as bad; she
adds, those saints never did show up, again.