Site of the Future
i light a fire - warm hands
scratch at my shadow leaning against crumpled stone
i'm squatting - staring at the sun
spiked by the summits of Maungapohatu - in the bushes
birds pause - mesmerised
you said you'd come back
you walked across the baked earth
said you’d come back –
you turned in the afternoon glare & said it
& i believed it - in me you've become a flicker of a thousand images - an ultramarine mirage forming
& reforming
in spite of myself -
a white-painted figure comes in from the horizon
i'm not alone - there's another figure –
another & another
it's not you who moves in single file - painted white
like a Viking - not you - not you
these men hide nothing but their faces – eyes hooded - deeply set i know them – i sense a quiet
fulfilment in their intrusion
they warm their hands
by the fire – one chants softly to himself – one prays to his stones another sings under his breath -
while another performs the miracle
of them being with me - this is the living site of the future – this
cold before the sun clamps onto a cloud - these hands
spread before the fire
moths dash at the flames
you said
you’d comeback
but i didn’t believe you
i didn’t believe you’d comeback
one day these men will disappear too
Iain Britton biography: Iain’s work has been nominated in the UK for a Forward Prize for Best Single Poem and Best First Collection. Kilmog Press, Like This Press, Oystercatcher Press & Lapwing Publications have published small collections. Poems have been published by Landfall, Cordite, Harvard Review, POETRY, The New York Times, Stand, Agenda, New Statesman, Prototype and many others. The Intaglio Poems was published by Hesterglock Press (UK) 2017. A chapbook – Project Constellation - by Sampson Low (UK) 2022 and a new collection, Uncertain Densities by Rufus Books Publishing (Canada) has just been published, inspired by the New York photographer Diane Arbus.
