Parasite (Diplolepsis rosae, 08.17)

catching light in the glade, Robin’s Pincushion I pinch from Dog Rose

a gall wasp’s nursery 

at its base, folded in the navel, a sliver of leaf, its matter and principle

detached, it is squiggle and bigarrure, like a lost thing, loosed from a 
forgotten pocket

tangled strands, forked with potential growth

the colour, variegated, pale yellowish straggles mixed to a deepening heart-red

reflective, but shading to absorption in the interior

chamber, where the larvae couch

in the dentate leaf, growth is a procession: from a planar occupation of space,
towards the articulacy of line

as each angle, at the edge, might be drawn to the filament it insinuates

a formal complication which, in flowering, sublimes to a shift in phase

to the subtle, sculpted surface of blossom, the expression of colour

so that successive impulses in the plant’s development, simultaneously hyper-realised

are the form of this Pincushion

I place it, almost weightless, on my palm

arc my fingers out and back, stretching the contact skin to a smooth, tactile area

receptivity in an act of formal opposition

as, in the make of things, there are complement textures

walk onwards into shade with it placed there, arm outstretched, suppliant to the
beech grove

a tingle of warmth and animation spreading into the palm, outwards, in movement
to occasion

and from out, in, to a fix in proprioception

so that action wakens to the walking body, wakening with a focus

habitual motion, tempered to a point of feeling stillness

as with the urge to move while resting in contemplation

to be drawn out into mystery, or cleave to what will unfurl in attention

to walk and write, holding the cadences as one

picked by this Pincushion

***

Low Weald

i.

in the stubble field at night
silent amongst the sunk aftermaths
the softening clay

across the road from the school –
simplest, necessary displacement
from the jargon of improvement 

– I bow my head and hear 
the rain in its randomness
liven the rank husks

its landings, ambient, as a slow 
crumple or catch of paper
a spurt in the fire of sound, never to ignite

I stand, head bowed
to the sound which, spread
leaps to me, this whisper

which is the sympathy of night
entering its beauty
as it softens to the mossy dark

rubato, in the time of thought
a swarm of withdrawal
with the livid opacity of what is

ii.

thrummed to the South Wind
the chalky swell of the Downs 
looms from the distant sea

it seems to dip and rise with no logic of distance
tuned to the rhythm of hedgerows
as I pass, whelmed in its clayey swash

all around, it breaks as rain
as jackdaws revel and swirl
flicker and fall in pairs

spelling nothing, they are stripes
in the iris of the world, a black rain 
over thinning oaks at the field edge

where love is sutured with risk
where, ecstatic with release, they make 
their origami of wind

as time folds to its undertow
the body a pebble in its drag
seethe and suck of the foot

sung, sudden, in the resistance of things

***

07.02.17 (North Downs)

across the black reflection

of yews 

          drake goosander glide

cloud-lambent 

their buoyant bodies

          metaphors waiting

to happen

           the angular heads

           yew-dark

***

Drifts, startles

i.

by the bus stop 

limes 
ribboned with pale bracts
coil and shiver
in recombinant wind

so their laden sallies
helical 
under autumn rain
fruit in some future past

occurrence occasions
slides of attention
a weather of moments
you step into

broken oceans
gathered
in light there 
as in the leaves

of teasels

ii.

sometimes a beech leaf 
unfallen in autumn
suddenly quivers

you hear its amplifying curl 
as a tap or rustle 
as a decoy animal
nudging into stillness

to where you notice 
the first furled arums
proposing their force 
of discretion

emerging mercury 
looped like thread 
clustered geometries

in each ready fold
as a buzzard flowers
lifting from the edge

it proposes 
interventions of texture 
as space drifting 
downwards into absence

such clustered scales 
of discontinuity 
in the living
the present integral

of phased events
as when catching
your night image 
in the train window

phantom happenings 
shuffled out of
holographic distance
to a single plane

as when sometimes a single unfallen leaf 

iii.

so that there is no interval of place

distance impossible

life touching its own form inwardly

as a turned surface

the orchid’s punning lip

the goldcrest in each permutation of yew

in saccadic time

the scrolled evening beech buds

lit in the lap of sun-drops

spooled in all senses

***

19 October, 7 a.m.

hard to say, seeing it, here, in the mauvish dawn, misty 
interval of morning 

in the thin up-spiralling bare branches of a dead tree – 
a goad to definition

to the gathering light – what force there is in the texture –
to the eye – of this magpie

in its poise and proportion, the invitation of touch
which seems beaming 

from the plump, upturned parabola of downy white
it shows to the gathering

light, as it ushers the world to itself – holding me 
in the motion it makes –

a kind of streaming elasticity through time, felt through
the waking body – except to say

there is a power of softness, which is equivalent 
to yearning: 

I think there is a pattern in the happening of thought: 
the sequence in things 

resolving into rote and rule, defines a ridge in reason: 
on one side

the gravity of theory, analogy, works to a sceptic unease
where it might be said

this tree, even, is an emblem of wrong, for the form 
of its appearing – marriage

of mind and fact (to admit distinction) tumbling
to a social annulment –

so the world weeps, in a guilt we make for it – are:
else there is

imagination’s gradient, where the thing slides into difference:
we are so used 

to the procedure – sense seeking 
sense in substitution

a tracking of like, likeness in feeling – as if the world
were a gloss on its own elaborations – 

yet we will never tire of it: the nested serialities, sequenced
re-sequenced to themselves

as we track and turn in the life of things: we have heard 
it all before – yet the choice –

(chance?) – or what afterwards seems it
is a question 

of categories: of what likeness to admit to our vision 
of sense: yet this morning 

there can be no surprise, as it tilts, this image, a bird, to the curve
of its becoming

lights, in the motions of memory, which is sight, on the circle
of agarics 

beneath the birch, in their yielding potency 
of emergence 

spongy and compact, where, furled in their earth-cauls, 
they bleb the dewy turf: 

these will gather, I know, to a fertile inflection –
to when the cap’s cusp

peeling back from the scarlet surface

scabbed with its veil

yields to the deep, pleated grace of the gills
their arc and opening

languid, somehow, in sporing: yet it is the moment
of their first appearing

which is cogent, now, with the magpie
since flown from its tree 

– or was – in the moment they made the place 
they met, must meet

known, deep in the unseeable mimicry of life – a time 
beyond their mourning

symbionts – synonyms – in the language which rises

***

19 October, 7 a.m.

the rooks 

how things work
     their life in us

arriving

winter’s black
      foliage

at evening