Tom Barwell
imagination announces itself
to end,
there is sufficient question
to spiral a snail;
leave the blind men to stare at
the strewn stones,
mooncast in cold blue,
until they topple and multiply.
trees reign over these craggy silhouettes,
ancient brothers named for monks,
towering vespers in
cathedrals, fingertips into
the vault itself.
a stillness watches,
a depthless bath,
where no apple could
dare to fall
and risk disgrace.
our silent psalm ushers the
bowed heads of snowdrops,
a chorus fruited by
a far-off owl, so attuned to her note,
even breath enters the crypt.
a fox’s bark
prickles back the cool air,
places her own blade
through the sternum of this
wordless imagination,
and the grey trumpets of daffodils
dip their bonnets
in the echo.
the lowly herbivore in my
palm wears a cracked
galaxy upon
her back like a telescope
from childhood. i place her
on the damp grass
for the next eternity,
the stark waves ebbing through
distant fields.
the slip of my shadow rings
on a stone floor like a terrible bell,
and from gemini rafters
the barn owl returns, summoned
on silent wings by the spell
that feeds her young.
slate rooves in scottish rain
an orchestra of fingernails
tap out a stone piece
on 400 million year old knuckles –
this rain has lasted
longer than that.
conjoined storms, head
to head to head, rushing
sea-monster of a thousand eyes,
holds out ten thousand frozen,
atlantic talons to
slash these unflinching few houses,
november to october.
but we, pale-aged cavers,
are warmed to our hearts by
such welcome, savage percussion, as
if it were our hearth:
otherwise lit by a pecuniary
photon once a month,
the beat of beaten claws is
familiar evidence of
this firmly anchored world.
bearded green, lichen tree-topped,
and trousered with a thousand mosses,
our blue veins wriggle with the
confidence of teeming streams,
plume skin-born clouds to
meet the great recycler,
tame as a toothed fossil,
shut out by a finger’s snap.
i picture ferns sheltering insects,
i picture a billion beetle wings, iridescence
shading layers of thick deer hides, bracken
scented, every bark and oil you might
infuse, distilled like malt whisky,
millennium blend, thicker than tar.
i raise a toast of tongues, these
fine rocks spun by a spinning sun –
shield, skin, father, drum,
tuned in perfect time.
Tom Barwell is an English poet, who is also recently published in Poetica Review. He’s a perennial student of nature and human nature, and works as a psychotherapist and coach. He lives by a creek, which feeds him his best lines.
