Priddy in the Mendips
At Priddy in the Mendips, Just-in-Roseland,
Talland, or wherever a Chiltern sunray
each new day shoots through the Vale,
birdsong's sinewy cheer runs long and
young down Swithun's firgrove.
Eyefulls of king fern seed invisibility,
grant a centre to embrace the lean
and gaunt redeemer's summer rain
St. Swithin weeps, christens apples.
I prest unblest content to my lips
awaiting an orchard in sequence of quincunx
on this road. Up ahead,
early April infant light:
new warmth and flower,
black foal in blossom,
shadow of kestrel circling haze;
the cooling down in daffodil shadows,
a chill having travelled from water somewhere.
Somewhere Sin was merely the Truth cloaked in a context of Matter,
the falsely occulted in a crevice of gorse
shadow made blacker by the force of the sun,
yellows of ling a calm arbiter –
for angel shadow, edge of halo,
trace of weightless mountain,
hint of limitless sentient volume –
the promises, the days to come,
the nights as one out the corners of our eyes
was a vast white bedsheet frozen
mid-billow, the thrill of space suspended
before, upon our faces,
the gentle kiss of the fall.
Adam Flint was born in North London and is currently based in Berlin. Previous poems have appeared in/been published by Shearsman magazine, Blackbox Manifold, Pamenar Press, and Corbel Stone Press, among others
Amethyst Review 