Parochial

I thought myself superfluous,
stepping aside for history to pass.
An irritant burden on the village alms,
dim, fearful, unknowable to myself
as certain livestock; vagrant in the mud.
It’s true, I remain superstitious. Illiterate
to the complexities of my own apathy.
I hunch in the rain like a hand-plough
overcome with clay, gaze like a scarecrow
from the dark borders of a wheat field.
But Father, though sometimes evasive,
I’m nostalgic for the loss which made
visible the age of my heart, like rings
on cleaved oak. Your absence taught me
the material of love was mine to construct
and now I see a latticework of frost
on the barbed wire fence, the blackbird’s
song visible as mist. Impressions I never
thought to wish for, each one growing
an impulsive tenderness, lifting me
skyward like a bucket from a well.

Jack Warren is a poet from Somerset with an MA in Poetics and an MSc in Applied Ecology. His first collection is forthcoming

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