Peal
The bells of the church on the headland –
landmark, daymark, sound-mark on a muted day –
spill their one tumbling tone row over and over and
never the same twice, quite, as they slither and trip,
a small platoon trying to keep in lock-step
down steepening scree. A teetering collapse,
which was always the point. Who wouldn't rejoice
in a waterfall's falling, which is its fulfilment
though it looks like emptying? A peal:
an appellation, calling itself out over and over
the bay, the mudflats, docks, city and here, peal
ringing no changes but our own, how one
breath differs from another. Peal: a word
repeated till its phonemes sliver off like swarf,
like whittling, peeling the onion of itself,
inexhaustible. A peal: an outcry, howzat, or:
Give generously, or: Have mercy, Lord
(or lover) on our imperfections, on the hitch
in the voice that makes each iteration
not quite repetition, on the slip that lets slip
a truth, the fumbling between gene and gene
that makes us
us. Peal us out, broad-
cast us, scattering of splinters,
selves, let us fall where we will, each
try-out, spin-off, cast-off, somehow utterly
the point.
And listen, we're still falling.
*****
Bone Music
This is something the bones say
in their hollows.
Last night I heard its echoes, inwards. I
was bones, I was all cavity.
This is something that birds say
in their feather-hollowed
lightness, how it takes a million years to grow
almost as light as air,
with just enough heft to have some
purchase on the wind.
Be slight,
not too slight, wind says: throw whatever weight
you have against me, I'll
decide to lift or let you go.
Today I'm empty. I've been pouring myself out,
down to the bottom of the breath.
Rest there. A stillness. Till the body reaches out
to haul me back to shore.
This is something the emptiness says.
Bone flute, cave music, thrum
of a rib cage that's the only stationary thing
among the slow migration
of the dunes. A siffling down the feathers'
hair's-breadth corridors.
This may be the song
of nothing. Throw your slight self at the wind.
Let it have the last word:
will you fly or fall.
Philip Gross has published twenty poetry collections, including four for children, and won many of the major awards in British poetry, from the National Poetry Competition to the T.S. Eliot Prize. His latest book, The Thirteenth Angel, was published by Bloodaxe in 2022. You can find more of his collections here.