Winner: Poem of the Week; August 18, 2007
Hardcastle Crags
(For Sylvia Plath)
second draft
by nacona
Heptonstall chalks soot-
blackened stone cottages in the Hebden river
as he passes, sidewalk art
on a sheen of rain sopped black top—
people, factory stacks, and the cobbled bridge
bleeds to a smear
along the bank side, only boat bobs
betray a current. Passersby do not scuttle
from his path, he wipes fury blank as an eraser
swiped slate on his face, screeches
the proper details onto the board,
mimics each smile and nod
weaving past them along the bridleway. Stamping
sparks like a steel U shoe, his anger
blends with the herd's tred:
heel rapped echoes dwindle at his back—
a vessel of sound sails a seeth of green moor
and is lost on a sea
of English countryside. He hears
nothing of their demise. Ahead crowds thin,
odors of earth rise. Millstone crags
peek out from the tree tops,
stacked as the bracken fungus
that clings to those sycamores and oaks. Moss slicks
rocks that litter the riven world, veils
stone features like her skin shrouds him in.
They fight to conquer her flesh again, watch
approaching grasses quill air in the distance, moiling
their greens of defensiveness through a break in the trees.
Walking out of the woodland
at Walshaw, Stoodley Pike looms
on a distant moor-top as she snaps
back into her female frame, emerges
from the leaf-strained gloom.
Her body a cocoon
he’ll break through once more soon.
6/28/2007
2nd Draft
Charlotte, NC
Poem of the Week: 08.18.2007
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Poem of the Week: 08.18.2007
An' it harm none, do what ye will. Blessed Be.
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