Mist In May Poem by Roger elkin

for John Sewell

The moor’s leanness swathed in scarves of wet
where low clouds cling to hillsides
and crumble to drizzling

Sky is heavy, light unreliable,
and grass, cold and full

A shanty-town-shamble of outbuildings,
corrugated sheets, asbestos sheds, horse-boxes,
lean-tos, rusting dumps of tractors,
discarded tyres, liquorice in the damp –
this is the farm, flat and mean, cleaved out of granites

The quag at the gate’s mouth betrays the cows’ impatience
where they nudge to milking
but today, pressed down by mist, they squat dolmenlike,
their Hereford-red a sandstone druidic circle
summoning up some ancient power,
calling a sun that has not been seen for days

Or stand, hangdog, by the millstone wall,
eyes glazed, away, glad for a break from flies,
donating their flanks to the sadness of wet
and the erosion of will

Only the spider’s web is preciously graced
and the lichens suddenly, smugly fat
like weeping sores