Poem: The Prisoner

The Prisoner

Water binds unconscious earth
At this the still-point of the year
With night-times long
And mornings numbing

Pulses slow
To count the hours
Fish, unblinking, face upstream
Scales poised against the current

Roots hang
Freeze and crack
Fingers crusty
Grunt with earth crumbs

Submerged pebbles roll
Sand grains, flakes of stone
Eddy upwards
Filtering the winter’s sunlight

Icebound soil shears from the riverbank
Set free by the thaw
Falling, an escaping prisoner,
Tumbling into the moving stream

As the earth turns to water
And water air
In the shallows where the trees sweat
I stand

And feel
Arms, hands,
Young as the melt
Dark, stained, veined with leaf-mould
Clasping, holding
Pulling me down
Bringing me
Into the dark
To the warm and waking
Slow, slow, heart throb