David, I find this quite compelling. The footsteps lead the pace, the
pulse. I keep wanting some of the "parentheticals" to be dropped plus a bit
of tightening. For instance, "Your stride/must bend and buckle,
ham-strings/strain like balked wood, eyes/transfixed,/ you lose sen of . .
."
(I've put in the kind of shortening that I speak about):
Because this is a very "heard" piece. It wants to be right there where the
path is (being made).
Sheila
On Sat, Apr 26, 2014 at 11:30 PM, David Bircumshaw <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> *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
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
> Tumblr: http://zantikus.tumblr.com/
> twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.com
>
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