OFF-ROAD:

Walking backtracks between fields, swapping stories on drover’s roads,
green-lanes, ancient by-ways, history stuck to our boots, heavy as
divers lead, waddling like cartoon robots. I like you with the smell
of leaf-mould in your hair, fresh earth turned by the plough,
frost-crumbled, worm-hole pocked, acres of brown, peppered with
smashed, Biomorphic, Jean Arp flint, split bean stones, white as bone,
bellies black & exposed. Men with hedge-cut sticks, nod with dogs
in passing & beards, canvas bags slung across shoulders, point us to
short-cuts down the glistening backs of gravel tracks by-pass these
rivers of congealed mud.

(K)