Tuesday 2 April 2013

'THE VOICE OF THE WIND HUNG IN THE BARBED WIRE' - POEM A DAY FOR APRIL, DAY TWO





The voice of the wind hung               
in the barbed wire

Today was going to be a poem about downtown Ulverston,
its cobbled streets, Roberts’ cheap shop, pavement outside
piled high with cardboard boxes: monster munchies, crisps,
toilet rolls, washing-up liquid. The sort of stuff you see
anywhere in the world in some small town backwater.

I planned to write just what I saw on my way to the Cumberland
building society: Spectrum hair salon, Market Hall – original
burned down in a fire circa 1878, WOW! Gold for CLOTHES
shop closed, next to the empty charity shop. Meant to walk
around jot down notes: face of a young lad, in his dad’s landrover,
him eating a pie from Irvings, behind them a sheep truck – today

is cattle market day, moved from Thursday to Tuesday -
god knows why - but all the while an image: a fence
on a rolling prairie, an oblong metal plate gold mirrored
in the setting sun nailed to it: ‘closed area do not enter’

and the strange song we heard below tree frogs and katydids,
below the kree-eee-ar of the red-tailed hawk crying its anger
at us, invaders of its land, as it hangs in the wind and we stand
leaning against the sagging fence that keeps us out or in.








title is a quote from 'Prairyerth - a Deep Map' William Least Heat Moon, Mariner Books
photo taken by Geraldine Green, Tall Grass Prairie, Flint Hills, Kansas, July 2012



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