Christopher Woodall

When a man stands on the edge of the moor
Receiving the wind’s rough investiture
Of all that power which remains extant
From the creation of air, sea and land
...

Novus Actus Interveniens


My time; I naively believe
...

The buses leave at dawn, with protest songs
On the lips of the old and young alike,
Returning in warm numb silence at night
On the eve of revolution. The throngs
...

A man in London and damp skies up here
Declare rain and storm; a dark wave rears up
But the blow does not fall. My footsteps veer
Into alleyways of a mildewed look.
...

The hills will wander in their time
Over the bones of men
Who once when suited thought it fine
To booted walk on them;
...

I lie resting half into the sand
And she pulses against me
As softly as the edge of the sea
Envelopes the edge of the land;
...

There was a shed I never saw
In a corner, spider-ridden,
When I came in the night to seduce you.
...

My girl with her blue eyes in the night
Stares with the passivity of Scottish mountains
And the urgency of emergency light;
...

My emerald tie in the sunlight
Circling this occasional pool
With the dignity of an albatross
Lapping the earth in an afternoon.
...

The wind blows boyish smiles across my face
Or so it seems, my love returns the look,
The same breeze turns over leaves in my book
Abandoned to the grass while we play chase.
...

The end of March and a magpie dances on our aerial,
The first endless egg turns up in the pond, white and empty
As an old skull, tiny as the pink blossom shivering
At the fingers and elbows of next-doors Winter Cherry.
...

The trees thrilling in the breeze will shake
Until suddenly shooting forth leaves like a magician
Revealing flowers, and rabbits will be pulled
Out of burrows covered in the smallest fur
...

Curled up naked her secrets all displayed
eyes as wide as the horizon
where a black sun falls into the bay
watching you past her knees wisely
...

Workhorse heels clip clop across the carpark
Past tatterdemalion schoolchildren,
My coat Galapagos Iguana dark
My emerald tie discretely hidden:
...

This warrior town, with pitted chain mail,
Sits haunted on the shore and stares out to sea,
Flattened and rusted from past industry
Flowered with bruises and dreams that will fail.
...

My hands are speckled as a sparrows egg
And my clothes are ruined, white up one leg,
But I can now peer through our old doorframe
Without your memory. The signs of shame;
...

The February sun is warm as tea
And the newly-coined air thick as gravy
On our ledge of moor in our office clothes
Where wild sheep stray from the old drovers road.
...

The persuasive bespoke oligarchs
Leer earnestly from the screen,
While drowning in their rabid barks
We dress as in a dream:
...

Before the day a warm breeze
Lifts dark condensation away
From beneath broad leaves,
Emancipated grasses straighten
...

Somewhere, on the edge of the forest and field
I think I am invisible, following the wire
Back toward the village and mere obscurity.
All the trees are fading but the mushrooms thrive.
...