THE HILL TO HENLEY
Just off the motorway, on the right a warren,
on the left the grassed lane that is closed
and used to go Lapworth church.
I come this way each work day and
know the seasons changes, the
bumps and hollows and where to
pass the geriatrics going along their
tunnel vision journey ten miles below the
speed limit to Stratford.
He was half way up the hill,
head cradled against the wet
cold comfort salted kerb.
Eyes open to the sky,
fixed and sightless, teeth white,
bared to face a brief reality,
his body curled round with
fine coloured groomed fur,
the tip of his tail coming to
life with each passing car.
I should stop and move the
body to a private deep hedgerow place
to decay in quiet decency.
So the images of each day I
pass by accumulate into a
story where the body becomes
first flat and then little more
than a stain, and the head still
rests against the kerb with
empty magpied pecked sockets
facing the sky.
This day the road has a dark wet stripe
along the kerb and everything has been
swept up into the maw of the road sweepel
leaving behind fragments from
Bosnia, Ruanda,
Sierre Leone, Eritrea, Ethiopia
Chechnya, Ravensbruck,
Buchenwald,
Theresienstadt
walking by to the same
old theme
By Brian Chase
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