Tilling
I work the soil with my own hard hands
while my neighbour, his sky-blue eyes
ringed with granite, stalks the fields
like the elements that close hard fast around me.
The deep furrows in the raw sienna mud
are waterlogged with bits of the sky.
A rook swims across one, then another.
He raises his gun. The shot thuds in my chest.
Birds scatter like thoughts; outwards.
The kickback jolts his shoulder which is,
I know, suede-soft and softly tanned, giving
gently to the touch of my clay-hard hands.
* Melissa Collin says “I am a freelance editor living on the North Norfolk coast,
and have had poems published in Ambit, Birdsuit and various competition
anthologies.”
