Tom Pickard

simplicity
say sleep
...

A lapwing somersaults spring
flips over winter and back.
...

at first they recce,
easy,
around the edge of  breath
...

a wren,
perched on a hawthorn
low enough to skip
the scalping winds,
...

When my lover became my enemy
I made my bed amongst winds
and drove the old road 'till my heart crashed.
...

you gave me a white rose
put the lamp on the stove
it caught fire
...

a mass of moth-eaten cloud
threadbare and spun across
a bullish moon
...

in paradise
I was ordered
to improvise
...

there is something so familiar
in what is said I stop and listen,
...

A lapwing somersaults spring
flips over winter and back.

After a fast walk up long hills, my limbs
the engine of  thought, where burn
bubbles into beck and clough to gill,
beneath a sandstone cliff  balanced on a bed of shale
and held from hurtling by Scots pine
that brush a scrubby sky with cloud snow scutters,
I found a place to sit
by snapping watta smacking rocks
and wondered — how would it be for you?

And so, alone,
un-alone even, in my anger,
bring you here.
...

at first they recce,
easy,
around the edge of  breath

then gathered gangs unleash
and breach

but the wind has no objective,
riding the slope of my roof
...

1

a wren,
perched on a hawthorn
low enough to skip
the scalping winds,
sang a scalpel song

seafrets drift
sheer along shorelines

listening to hail spray glass
and wind
and a waitress laugh
in a cafe without customers
I fell to fell thinking

* * *

a sullen light through vapor
thins a line of hills

the edge of everything is nothing
whipped by wind

watched on a webcam
bound to a bedpost
gag on my shaft

rose blush of road-kill rabbit
insides out on tarmacadam

* * *

cumulus in a tarn
its fast shadow
flees far hills

a wave of sleek grass
skiffs mist

my hand thought of her
a photograph
waiting to happen

* * *

this come-to-kill wind
rips at the root

here she comes
and there she goes
rushes bow to rime

I should shut down
close off
stop
if I could

how quick the mist
how quick

2

my lover, the assassin,
is beautiful

she has come to kill me
and I concur

just now she sleeps
but when she wakes I'm dead

her eyelids flitter
as I prepare her potions,
her delicious poisons

* * *

as she flew past a lick
of her melodic nectar
stuck to my wing,
making flight, for an instant,
sticky

but nothing preening couldn't fix

* * *

she asked about my heart,
its evasive flight;
but can I trust her with its secrets?

and does the merlin, in fast pursuit of its prey,
tell the fleeing lark
it is enamored of its song?

or the singing lark turn tail
and fly into the falcon's talons?

* * *

my heart, the cartographer, charts
to the waterline,
is swept back as the tide turns
wiping the map blank, wave
after moon-drawn wave

but it beats, my heart,
of its own volition

a lark sings winds rush reeds
walking home I stride these tracks
with her tread

the blurred thumbprint
of a smudged moon

3

it has gone on for days

strumming rushes
taking up tales,
taking them on

the fall of my foot,
on tufts

a stroke of light along a law lain in under a long cloud

I accrete—lichen to limestone
sphagnum to peat

* * *

late shadows gather in the dark

words unwrite
as they are written
unspeak
as they are spoken

songs sprung
from heart and lung
to tongue

unsung

* * *

drunk winds stumble over shuffling roofs
shake his sleep who dreams
a lost love
will not
let
go

recurring swirls
of old gold
blown light

you can't help
but be in it

as it opens
and falls back on itself
unfolds and unsays

I do not want to die
without writing the unwritten

pleasure of water
...

I forgot forget
amnesia
was lost to me

then a smooth
fur-free fruit
unnamed for days

until I found it
ripe
on my tongue
...

When my lover became my enemy
I made my bed amongst winds
and drove the old road 'till my heart crashed.
Where's the bypass?

Washing my shirts, wringing them out.
Hung in the breeze.

Water skips
undressed
over outcrops.

What it says is.

Wind,
roots in rock.

Lying on Long Tongue,
sun diffused in mist.
Easy sleep
without waking.

Edge of
displaced echoes
air around
and sound
of  bird and 'plane

A swallow's glittering chitter.
...

walking up John Street
thinking of you

I saw a slash of sea
between houses

and felt — as always,
no matter mood,
its or mine — 

as though
it was the source
of language

and language
the source of itself
...

what we have is
what there is
and who we are

and who we is
is love
...

simplicity
say sleep

or
shall we
shower

have an apple

you are
as I need
water

shall I move?
do you dream?
shallow snow

flesh

melt this
...

you gave me a white rose
put the lamp on the stove
it caught fire
the I Ching said
thunder above the lake
lightning in Baker Street

switched on the cooker
and blew a fuse
blue flash
you see
the whole experience
is electric
...

a mass of moth-eaten cloud
threadbare and spun across
a bullish moon




an animal wakes
when I walk in winter,

wrapped against
a withering wind,

solitary,

on a Solway flat




winter migrants gather
in long black lines

along a silver sleek

heads held back,
throats
thrust toward

an onshore rush

occasionally cruciform,
static

in a flying wind

as though
in obeisance
to the sea





retracing steps
washed out

by whimpering silt

each tide a season
in the pecking mall




they call as I approach,
an upright spelk

on their shelf,

gathering my notes

and theirs

we scavenge
ahead of our shadows


waiting for what

the tide brings in
or leaves out




purple,
hedged cloud

edged gold

hung
on silver slates
of sand


diverted
leaps of light

surrender water

risen
from rivulets

roughed
from rage


repealing waves
repeat


a curlew's
estuary echo


who,
but you

and the wind's
wake?
...