Don Coles

Here’s a handy Arcadia, let’s go in. Rich loamy smell, heavy fronds – I’ll hold this one up while you bend through. Frangula siliquastrum – fissured trunk, glossy blunt leaves, and what an odd angle to this low branch, jutting forward like a warning arm. Abandon hope, short people. Loamy smell, damp clumps of humus, encroaching blunt leaves – and this...

Forests of the medieval world, that’s where her mind will wander the three dissertation years, lucky girl – Forest of Bleu, which crowded around the walls of Paris and stretched 10,000 leagues in every direction; the great Hercynian forests of East Prussia, from which each year 334 drovers bore the logs for the fires in the Grand Duke’s castles of Rostock, of Danzig and,...

Driving in the car with her Was wonderful! So close – He loved, without any rush To say so,

Those guileless uncoverings of Legs getting in, their confidential Jostlings as long as he kept His foot down, the car

Moving in the tunnel of itself Narrowing their options to Crossing or uncrossing, or just Dumbly offering themselves

Usually neatly together, which was Fine, or now and then...

No, he never saw her so, his wife naked Under her dress in trifling talk With somebody in that dark garden Down there – but he thought it. If he could trade this in For a sadder thought he would. Now any pause by day or night Lights it up inside, her body’s gentle Tips and declivities Unshadow the world, he can’t believe Such bliss escapes anybody. There must be another day...

I must declare an interest in this particular Thomas. Dylan, R.S., above all the heart-inscribed Edward – these I admire, respect, claim. D.M. I have had little luck with.