23. The Wood Keeps Cool into Itself

The wood keeps cool into itself
bracken of memory stored there
burnet, orange-spot flickering before
the iron-age fort of Castle Hill
baking far off.

Kirklees Priory, sequestered in trees
a flight of goose-quill
last arrow of a thought that flew
into the nondescript
imagination trailing at its wake —

and still the meadows bake
thistle, hog-weed, burdock
a sargasso of petals
in the gold and silver grass-seed sea.