A few feathers on the riverpath by the copse
betray the corpse.
Nothing more sinister
than unseasonal cold weather.
The egrets and light have returned to the river
the same week as a storm from Russia.
The big drifts take their time, stay
unthawed on the far bank for days,
discoloured by a topsoil
that has blown off the fields.
The white birds fly, awkward, away
upriver. Always away.
And I move, a violence all my own
shape, back through the town
alone and shamed,
a man on his worn out, empty way.

*

Will reads on our Port Eliot stage this Sunday.