We found out yesterday that Caught by the River poet in residence Will Burns has been announced as one of the Faber new Poets for 2014. With a tear in our eye and a beer in our hand, we heartily congratulate Will (and Faber for their sound judgement) and publish a new poem of his.
To stagger about each other
a few weeks among these strange
and brand new angers.
Find the fence, burnt black
and cracked with older marks.
To wait on better weather.
Take a look towards the wood—
the pine cones hiding spear heads,
dripping sap like beebread.
And we have to cover miles
from all that timberline mist
to be here on the potholed road.
Because this is how we leave the town,
feel it wheel around us,
force the stream into canal sluice,
fall West-East, pitching from
dark to light and beyond
into what we call the wood, now.