Photograph by John Cairns
Omen
After the wind stops,
we are sloshed
to and fro in the silence
like drowned ducklings
or a photograph developing
in its tray.
Harder and harder to avoid,
these images of aftermath
and no reply:
a still garden
where the blossom
neither fails nor fruits,
the seedlings never push up
from the root,
the bee never docks
in the colour-blind flower.
*****
The Path
On the far side of the high bridge
stands a clump of willows
losing leaves
in the blank November lamplight.
The morning is all angles and degrees
like the coots practising lift-off
in their quarter of the pond
or the willows stopped
by nothing in the act of falling.
Two dark moons of mistletoe
in the treetops
lend themselves to the air of observation
and habit below:
half-inflated swans seeing off dogs,
a pair of crows discussing their arthritis,
people carried round the park
on a thin grey carousel.
Last leaves stencil the white horizon
with waders' feet
and the bridge is behind me.
Will Eaves is a novelist, poet and musician. He has been Arts Editor of the TLS (1997–2011) and Associate Professor in the English department at the University of Warwick. In 2020, his novel Murmur won the Wellcome Book Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Fiction. The two poems above are from Exposed Staircase, published by Rack Press in 2022.