Poems

THE GORSE FIRE

Kicked ash throws up glosses
Of beetle underparts.
Fire licked off
Scurrying backs: spat out the rainbow trims,
Not noticed before. How they iridesce . . .

Sunk in the root shadows,
Perhaps some equivalent of yellow
Pleasured a beetle's dark-
As gorse in bloom livened the sad
Human eyes?

So pure a yellow floated as though free
Of the hill holding it.
A tuned ear,
Transposing yellow from the key of sight,
Seemed to hear water
...