Chyort
by David Musgrave
[ poetry - march 08 ]
Eye-deep in pollen across the plain I strode, cubed
by star pickets and their slack cross-hatchings,
sun-blind and sweating, the chunked city smoking
out of green fog, dodged traps and skirted trees lashing
a sky-powdered moon, sank ankle-deep in a dam's
dark border and witnessed the splashed rising of birds
and a frightened trotting of sheep, the spume
of silent aircraft knotted in thin white cords above,
heard the hiss of road trains braking, their savage
road-thundering, earth freshly ripped and steaming,
the sluggard river clay-bright and oozing
into cracked banks, stepped through a rust harvest
of doorless cars and a ripple of tattered barns,
through fields of scattered cardboard, bound
newspapers, slashed and slithery vinyl
chairs and a chipped glossy dog, tailless
and began to climb, fingernails dark rotting
crescents, up flesh-coloured sides thickly
reeking moist garbage, rasped knees
on sandstone polyhedrons and lodged boots squarely
under peeling roots and then rucked clear and strove
towards the mantle of sky scummed with cloud, dragged
back with each step in a skitter of fresh, pale rocks
and crabbed free, edging closer, ever as far.
