Further alternative realities

The last blog briefly spoke about alternative realities, something of a theme which is always rattling around the back of my head. And as we live in increasingly unreal times, freshly amazed that things could turn out like this, it's an idea which feels increasingly relevant, another poem on that theme:

Hi-ho silver away

 

Crossing between

The parts of years

Seamlessly, as if

 

I have a lengthy series of apologies to make

 

One could only see

the moments between

from a distance

 

mostly for minor infractions

 

the accretion of time

layering, sedimentary

time, ossifying

 

like making you listen to my awful band

 

the unnameable

horror of the depths

the layers of green

 

like only ever projecting

 

the silence of

the midsummer house

its isolation

 

like never listening

 

the headland viewed

from above

a panning camera

 

I’ve only recently learned

 

land undulating in time

with the sea’s swells

a slow echo

 

that every act of indifference

 

an endless ripple

like a slowly shaken carpet

the Earth’s co

 

has consequences

 

-respondent sine waves

Slow, sad, imagined

Shuddering, unstoppable

 

And the land keens at minor slights

 

coursing along an imagined England

shaking it to the core

rattling its raddled heart

 

parched peas in a tin can

 

on a sun-stricken street in Kirby

I saw a three wheeled pram

Pushed determinedly

 

What have I done

 

I saw bombs fall where they’d

Make no sound

I watched the moss absorb history

 Taking the stories down into

The peat which

Rents stories

By the century

 And this arc this

Imagined England

Cutting itself loose from reality

Cutting itself away

From every thing but itself

 Watching its flights of roosting birds

Arrowing in flexing the sky

To hunker down for the night

 

Hold tight, everyone.