Poem: 'Midsummer at Clent'

This poem was written a few years ago, after watching the sun go down on the summer solstice at Clent (pictured above, today). It was published in my pamphlet The Body in the Well (HappenStance, 2007).

Midsummer at Clent

The year was bleeding across the sky

and we were there, perhaps, to celebrate.

I had no voice to give, nothing left

to say anything close to the truth until

I saw the kestrel nailed to the air,

aimed at the sun, holding her zenith

taut on the giddy fulcrum of the earth.

Held up like a lens to a blinding eye,

her feathers suspended in amber.

She stayed near me, as if she were

a periscope over the false horizon.

She stayed until the breath of winter

blew out of the western grave,

freezing a word on the lips of my praise.