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No 132 - Spring 2005
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| Nick Burbridge |
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| These Rituals Of Hazard: Featured writer Nick Burbridge |
| | Moondance |
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Stanmer Park, late afternoon;
we come for a partial eclipse of the sun
but Molly has us pressganged
in the belly of the woods
to shore the bothy built
last time out from torn boughs
and broken bushes still in leaf
to masquerade as a night-shelter
as if for some lost family.
She knows what she does;
with each weft and bind of wood
the shadows of a dark man’s lethargy
which circle her crookedly
threatening her mother’s strength
retreat, a pack from kindling flame,
and we are left warmly lit while we weave,
making of this what it is not: a stronghold
lasting as long as she dreams.
But this is a rare hour; as we climb
back among scarred trunks
we reach a bowl with the arcing sky;
from blade to blade each spun thread’s caught,
thicket and boulder burnished.
What seems to demand faith is naked,
luminous; where shadows stretch and splay
in a strong hold of stained palms
our child swings across the sun.
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page(s) 59
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