Then
After a time of fires
in oil drums, eddies of dog packs
where the hospitals had been,
first histories were published
elsewhere, first conferences
counted the spent cartridges.
Wildflowers meantime
came straggling back
to cover the poisons,
saplings offered their fragile
statements of intent;
and in its bramble nest
a shell waited to be stirred
by a ball, by a grandchild’s
ball, by a grandchild.
Alasdair Paterson lives in Exeter, where he co-organizes the monthly Uncut Poets readings. His latest collection is My my my life (Shearsman Books, 2021).