Landscapes
This is the landscape of others' daydreams
dinner plate flat and domesticated like a tablecloth.
It’s too predictable to be perfectly safe.
Small ducks paddle in its bilges
and moorhens waddle pond-toed
over the flat green baize of the water weed. Landside and the green is pruned and manicured
to tidy perfection.
Even its countryside is disciplined.
an ordered game of chess played out
on clearly delineated fields
with rolled hay-bales for pawns.
Let your imagination stroll off
and it will return
appropriately and impeccably chaperoned.
There is no chance of inadvertently
stumbling on where the wild things are.
God forbid there should be wild things.
This was your land
though I never saw it.
I thought you were with me
chasing the swallow's tail to the next new horizon
when all you wanted was to play hide-and-seek
in the not so long grass;
the extent of the wilderness you hankered for.
While you came and wentmy eyes hungrily followed not youbut the buzzard on its way to the high places.
My ears dreamt of the wind's drum beat
and the sea moaning for the rock heavy coast.
I climbed moorland and mountains in my sleep
but when I came down again
you were not there.
I had lost you to the hay stack fields,playing hide-and-seek with reality:
our landscapes sundered without us noticing.
Go feed the ducks
they will need looking after.
"Landscapes" is published in the poetry pamphlet "The Submerged Sea"
©J.S.Watts
