Hill-Fort Poem by David Cooke

Evening, and small fields
are reapportioned in shadow,
the hills smudged dully
against a residue of sky.

The honing call of a curlew,
distant, is finally
no more than the sky's soft
pulse. Night draws in,

and the mind is a function
of its yielding light;
it makes out smoke
from a further camp,

the sense of it borne
upon a stirring of breeze.
I imagine dogs
and people, their utensils

ranged around fire;
the land burdened
with lumber of settlement;
blood-heat of habitation.