HELEN MOORE

TAILBACK

 
To be at the wheel of a
lethal machine endows
most humans with zealous
independence –
time-bound, hands at
ten-to-two, I too learnt
mirror, signal, manoeuvre,
but knew that Hedgehogs,
Badgers, Voles never learn
The Green Cross Code,
hence the tailback…
an endless chain of
metal shunts crowding
my rear-view, tooting,
revving up behind. Under
pressure, that old damage
to my coccyx, aching in
the densely padded
fold of grey up-
holstery, threatened
suddenly to burst
through layered clothes –
underwear, leggings,
skirt – enticing me
with wild ideas
of prehensile grasp,
of caressing
saplings as I pass;
of how I too
might have
my own
tail
back
 



HORIZONTAL
 
For Peter MacFadyen
 
Lying in bed, I think of my grandfather, a taciturn Norfolk farmer, who on retiring would say “I’m off to make all parts equal!”  A natural anarchist in the sense he knew that left alone, fields devolve to woodland; that flowers co-evolve with insects; that in winter, songbirds congregate in mixed flocks; and all without the use of guns.
 
Feeling my body settle into the mattress, heart slowing, lungs’ swell and fall, belly gurgling as it digests supper – and all without superior orders – I consider myself as holon, fractal of the bigger picture, and wonder when we’ll each relax our vertical habits, when all beings will live freely horizontal.  
 


 
OUR DAILY BREAD
 
On the restoration of Talgarth Mill, Black Mountains, 2011
 

Seed    crust    dense body      crumb –
 
           at lunar Lammas here on Mynydd Du
                      giving thanks for water, fire, steel,
where reclusive springs rise,
           begin their descent;
 
atoms of hydrogen clasped by two of oxygen
           tumble through Cwm Dwr-y-Coed
                      (Valley of Water & Wood),
                      land of shorn Ewes, who browse behind the shelter
           that Bracken fronds provide;
 
above, slate-grey cumulonimbus
           (streaked as if the Sun just raked out its embers)
sees itself as liquid plying glassy lips of stone,
           dark hairy mosses,
                      falling strands of come;
 
swift flight of rotting debris, bark, leaf,
                      a sheep-skull nodding like the Moon;
here we sit to cleanse our minds,
           make empty kists of bone –
                      back-to-back our bodies form
                                 a Janus box
                                            sounding upstream & down;
 
           in-breath, hum circling
                      round wind-torqued Hawthorns – Birds drawn
                                 to the hearth of our chant;
 
and on past stands of late Foxglove
           the pagan-hooded stems that venerate the Sun
                      as it bursts through chasms
                                 in the cloud, charming all the brooks
                                            which now make common cause
 
           before           precipice pours
                      into ancient woodland,
           & trees cling to gulleys scoured by its path;
 
here in Cwm Pwll-y-Wrach, torrents –
           pressure-wash on mud-stones
                      carving beds, tables, steps,
                                 dumping Stork-nests of wreckage;
 
but downstream, how the river shrinks,
           spreads a laundry of silks
where Dippers come to peck;
           marbles enigmatic patterns – water-light on trunks;
hush, as the air shimmers with Coal Tits’ piercing tisou-tisous;
 
           then through a tunnel-shade of Hazels
spitting nuts in its pools,
           it tinkers down the valley
with Enchanter’s Nightshade
           as it serpents into town;
 
there, tripping over boulders, it falls again, again,
           smoothes itself back out,
                      kneads the feet of stone houses,
                                 bubbles by the lovers huddled on a bridge –
                      flirts with us, makes postcards,
recalls how it’s changed
course,
 
                                                                  is autonomous 
                      yet willing to slip back in harness,
           replenish the headrace
                      (old familiar, a pleasant sensation)
 
           lend its resource as onto the wheel the Ennig roars,
                      fills the oaken buckets
                      (slotted hands sparkling as the mighty wheel tips),
 
                                            rumbles the axles, 
                                                                  & deep within the mill,
 
                                                                  these massive shafts which drive the spinning grin –
                                                                             cogs, teeth
                                                                  that turn the granite stone
 
                                                                  where grist, rushing through its eye,
                                                       is crushed        feathered into sacks:
 
                                                       baker               dough                          town fired up.

Copyright © Helen Moore
‘Our Daily Bread’ appears in ECOZOA (Permanent Publications 2015)

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Helen Moore is an award-winning ecopoet and socially engaged artist based in SW England. Her debut poetry collection Hedge Fund, And Other Living Margins (Shearsman 2012) was described by Alasdair Paterson as being “in the great tradition of visionary politics in British poetry.”  Her second collection, ECOZOA (Permanent Publications 2015), which responds to Thomas Berry’s vision of the ‘Ecozoic Era’, where we live in harmony “with the Earth as community” has already been acclaimed by John Kinsella, as “a milestone in the journey of ecopoetics”. Watch Helen’s award-winning poetry film here: http://vimeo.com/69228739