Hedgerows (II)
Having been sick upon waking and trying to stand
as the cold, white, heavy orb of the sun began
its second hand’s ticking around the rim of the sky,
I’m taking ginger steps around the Meadows with my friend
who croaks out a laugh at some brave people in a punt
moored up on the Cherwell’s bank;
like they’re stopping to refuel, he says.
Jet-planes meeting in the air to be refuelled.
At my Christian primary I believed the sun was God
incubating his flock, the hatchlings from
a serpent’s egg.
I’m on my way, growing into being pale-faced like the moon,
from ‘innocence’ to ‘experience’,
being lit by others as opposed to lighting; the yin.
With a bleary-eyed look up from my feet I notice
Canada geese picking across the blue grass
with occasional weeping notes of honking.
Soon they’ll migrate again
(as dependable as the moon’s reappearance from his tomb)
and be heard overhead, in v-formation,
black arrowheads against the sky.
My friend tells me they swap positions as they go along
when each new spearhead begins to tire
from having pushed on up to the height of the spires
the eyes reach up to as you enter the Meadows.
He says we’ll have to go punting when Trinity rolls round again;
with everything ahead we’ll have to meet to refuel ourselves
somewhere down the Cherwell where the river loops through the Meadows
or where it seems to take you towards where Summer VIIIs take place
or down past Magdalen’s Fellows’ Garden
or somewhere, elsewhere,
etc., etc., etc.
Somewhere near the end of my second year
Having been sick upon waking and trying to stand
as the cold, white, heavy orb of the sun began
its second hand’s ticking around the rim of the sky,
I’m taking ginger steps around the Meadows with my friend
who croaks out a laugh at some brave people in a punt
moored up on the Cherwell’s bank;
like they’re stopping to refuel, he says.
Jet-planes meeting in the air to be refuelled.
At my Christian primary I believed the sun was God
incubating his flock, the hatchlings from
a serpent’s egg.
I’m on my way, growing into being pale-faced like the moon,
from ‘innocence’ to ‘experience’,
being lit by others as opposed to lighting; the yin.
With a bleary-eyed look up from my feet I notice
Canada geese picking across the blue grass
with occasional weeping notes of honking.
Soon they’ll migrate again
(as dependable as the moon’s reappearance from his tomb)
and be heard overhead, in v-formation,
black arrowheads against the sky.
My friend tells me they swap positions as they go along
when each new spearhead begins to tire
from having pushed on up to the height of the spires
the eyes reach up to as you enter the Meadows.
He says we’ll have to go punting when Trinity rolls round again;
with everything ahead we’ll have to meet to refuel ourselves
somewhere down the Cherwell where the river loops through the Meadows
or where it seems to take you towards where Summer VIIIs take place
or down past Magdalen’s Fellows’ Garden
or somewhere, elsewhere,
etc., etc., etc.
Somewhere near the end of my second year