She is there heavy stoned in the birch light
where the birch bark breaks among
stands of alder ash and lime:
the bloom of rain, the standing ranks of dew
that the keeper keeps her standing stones
still there to face looking on the mirror of each leaf
whose fragile ribcage hangs exoskeletally
suspended between both branch and the trembling sky
where clouds escort and carry their comrades to each other’s tumulus
passing the tumulus in this autumn weather
where the broken light is peach and rose in the evening
where the dusk falls heavy as dew on each face and limb
and the trees are shadowed by the moving clouds
you have come here though you do not where from somewhere you do not know
and where you are not is where skin transfers its open meadows
where the insolent madwoman breaches the dykes
watery letters flood the pigments of her mind…
it is there for to be remarked upon
we cannot see where we shall not go
and we cannot go where we shall not see
and the age of great standing stones is passed
where the ash trains as it does
as it will do as it must
as the dusty rain streaking the face
that looked upon the window pane
where the birch twigs sprout from the stahlhelm
and the plaster hardens to reflect your face .
~ Colin Honnor
Colin Honnor has been widely published in numerous magazines in print and online, including: Poetry and Audience, 21 Years of Poetry and Audience Anthology, Agenda, Outposts, The Rialto, Fire, Smoke, Orbis, Ore, Iron, Lines Review, Envoi, Staple, Sepia, Hybrid, Poetry Nottingham, Tops, Pennine Platform, Ammonite, Terrible Work, Tandem, Odyssey, Headlock, The Swansea Review, Iota, The People’s Poetry, Outposts, 4×3, Arabesques International Review, The Dublin Quarterly, Braquemard, Poetry Manchester, Poetry Quarterly, Masques, Great Works, Aireings, The Wolf, Various Artists, The Poetry Business Anthology, The Screech Owl, Eunoia, Broken Spine, Poetry Bay, and many others. Collections, mostly from small presses and private presses include From Underground (Mirabilis 1986); Dante; Cavafy; The Somme; (Yew Tree Press). English Poetry is forthcoming from the University Press of America. A former editor of Poetry and Audience, he runs a fine arts press in the Cotswolds.