Listening for Updates
the white horse is half a hillside
tall, emblazoned on the grooved green
upland flank like a white tattoo
rooks fidget and caw, stirring the heights
with faint voices, their nests like tiny
clouds caught in the high March aspens
behind the stilled concrete factory’s
eight-pack the dutiful two-tone chime
of a train echoes like memory
no trails in the blue, only the rooks
flying circuits round the willow copse,
a distance on three generations
radio blaring, practice their strokes
listen for updates—troubling with
indistinct waves the valley flat.
White Horse Country Park, Wiltshire
March 2020 at the start of lockdown
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Diana Durham is the author of three poetry collections: Sea of Glass, To the End of the Night and Between Two Worlds; the novel The Curve of the Land and two nonfiction books: The Return of King Arthur and, most recently, Coherent Self, Coherent World: a new synthesis of Myth, Metaphysics & Bohm’s Implicate Order.
Amethyst Review 