Barbrook 1

We took this Manhattan of trees apart
had not the coomb-cold mist with us
had not the our lodged enough, the heart
for either’s cons. But as a species   does
the yard-grown-thing contain the track-grown-thing?
I wouldn’t want to paste my own hang-ups
about personal freedom on a plant
there is something   I think   about cycles
or totem-type conundrums like Richard
said. Like kinder-eggs the seed   like kinder-
eggs the trough-caught rain   oh deep sea plastic
stack of built-up discarded shells   where is
the everywhere-toy that becks through rain hum,
that Mamtor angles like a dancer from?

See? There are two parts

See? There are two parts, the road’s eighty sharps
perhaps I talk to someone and they are
not from here    the moment’s cot death carts
me backward-oh the track the caves the county

Things (again) living and dying   they come
to the Dove the generations    they come
from cities   the stepping stones what is it
to leave a bike-bright Saturday and cross

The Dove? Through Ashbourne’s stack steep grit trucks
pick-rough face at peak   or down from Buxton
where the weak light is grand on the houses

 
Crossing the Staffordshire Moorlands
border, near Longnor

Immortal light, cold-bit blue slight-of-beam
we tireless rivers, endings combined
in triple-flow, in black-as-crow cold seam.

A place’s history, what does it sing?
A moment’s chuckled mystery, does it

contain what in a single breath condensed
is but a match away from heat, a tense
of stone-known weight, of waiting on time’s fence?