Darran Anderson

By the Cold Black Water

There are thorns tangling a briar
round the ricket fence that is the border.
And I cut my hand clearing the gate
from the summer tide of the wheatfield
onto the dirtpath, wet as sculptors clay.
Birds perch on the telephone wires
like musical notes on lines
between the ditch and the sky
between the ditch and the everlasting light.

The sun shone on the black water ribbons,
the glistening cobbled stones.
Insects skirting on the surface,
performing miracles like tiny messiahs.
And there is no solace for a troubled soul
except the river tumbling on
and the birds singing
and the bull stalking the field
and the wheat swaying unseen.

As the rain clouds churned and toppled eastward
I took shelter in the woods.
The crackle of footsteps upon the soft pine needle floor
set it off from stillness into life.
As I rest on the bough of a fallen tree
there is a skirmish of wings high overhead
in the splintered light of the canopy

Outside the rain hurtles down
and the wind ploughs furrows in those treeless fields
and the white granite bridge darkens
as the deluge rolls in.

On the hills a coven of mountain ash
stoop and huddle as the skies darken
and the ripening clouds burst in all the air
and the rain comes down
on every inch of that sacred place
where informers have knelt in trembling prayer.

A gate creaks up by the farmhouse.
There are scatterings of berries
by the roadside
each one baptized with a drop of rain.

Clouded Border

Strange comfort, the moon.
Shining down on the towers and the woods,
on the judges and the judged alike,
dragging the tides with it.
Marie kept radium salts in a glass vial
on a wooden stand by her bed.
At night she lay blinking at it
and lost all track of time,
spellbound in the blue azure light,
the cerulean glow.
A droplet of the moon by her sleepless bed.