Setting the Red Pennon

These bright horizons are a different kind of maze
that we cannot see, because now is absent of it,
mostly grey cloud smeared up in a pompadour
of anger in the waning sky. And a stone tower set
upon the coastal ridge there, ravaged by the saline
air, and waves and storms that hit upon it.

They set out a red pennon, the bloke from the
authorizing committee or some old pensioner, or a
recipient of some inheritance. The lawn bowed
down before the face south, grew steadily and
by design or inaction covered everything. The sea
blue or grey, and the sky both, and the lawn.

We (edit)

moving awkwardly
in the summer of
idolatry.

The body made
memory more
vivid

than the declaration
in wood no
deeper excavated.

The calm pool;
followed the grain
drank mead

follow the swallow
of reeds moving
sickly from

their stems, their
roots beneath
them. Agrestic

motions fade
and grow;
flow the way the oceans flow.

That fight felt
deeper after fire,
moved, but went

nowhere. The gist

Soft tee-shirt not
bought, but found
later. And wear it

for no reason, but
old cotton
on flesh.

The great wake
up, hungover it seemed
then without drink

and no sense
of additions, no
medicinal herbs,

no primrose.