*Crossing the Mud, the Day Finds *
me walking on the line
of a worn, smothered path
through a brown muddy,
mud-muddled, ridge and furrow
field (‘rig’, I’m told, they say
‘rig’ in the county)
trying to follow
someone shorter
else’s steps, footsteps,
the glue pull of slippage
either side. By *Smeeton*
(the Smith’s *toun*)
*Westerby* (the West farm).
Appreciate how hard it is to follow
in someone else’s steps. The as they say
to follow. To literally.
No other gait goes
quite the same,
on the ancient path. Your stride
has to bend and buckle, your ham-strings
strain like balked wood, your eyes
become transfixed,
you lose
all sense of track
and where (
*in the field, the goo mud field*) of what
is above, beside, behind you, of where
you are heading
other than those prints,
the small moist prints like mist,
on the human way,
*writhen *
the ever-writing map,
across dumped ploughed centuries,
the snake-track
before you.
--
David Joseph Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
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blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
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