Earthworks
West Kennett
I migrate back to this farmland
where the level of the corn field
has been distorted by the earthen mound
facade of a house
that swallows the dead
and has for centuries. On a ledge
inside the entrance, in the human-summoned dark,
a line of black-eyed faces stare down at me,
their flesh behind glossy feathers
and darting in towards its nest
is the swallow, inverting the tomb
into a cradle, raising five lives from this chamber.
Stewart Carswell is from the Forest of Dean and currently lives in Cambridgeshire, where he helps to organise Fen Speak. His poems have been published in Envoi, Algebra of Owls, and The Fenland Reed. His debut pamphlet is Knots and branches (Eyewear, 2016). Website: https://stewartcarswell.co.uk/