Dorset
by Mark Kirkbride
Birds perch on telegraph wires
like music notes on staves. They shift
in stop-go cinematography
as cattle with black and white maps
on their backs lumber across fields
under curving shadowy hillsides,
sunlight-slashed. Two horses, one white
with white lashes, the other sorrel
with a blonde mane, stand flank to shoulder,
static from poll to croup but facing
opposite ways, like a couple
not talking. Hook-headed, a hawk
hovers. In woods, all elbows, knees
and contorted spindly limbs vaguely
gesturing, that tap of Morse means
woodpecker. Nerves in soil inch
a foot, and clumsy butterflies,
flimsy as the earliest planes,
brush a chrysalis on a shrub
that hangs like a parachutist
caught in a tree. Kite-like, the soul
tugs. A heartbeat of hooves, the flicker
of birds against coastlines of cloud
and all the sweeps and dips and folds
of countryside invite one to
follow dreamy rivers out to
where the sea broadcasts to the world.
Mark Kirkbride lives in London, England. He writes fiction and poetry. His novel Satan’s Fan Club will be out with Omnium Gatherum in 2013. His poetry has appeared in the Big Issue, Morning Star, Mirror and anthologies.