Leaf
On the new-mown playing field, summer-yellowed
and ragged, but glistening in the autumn morning,
a horse-dung gobbet amid the straw
slithered grassily into his glance which focused
uncertainties of glancing smoky as rainfall
and caught in the brown-green instant a dragon,
swirls of alloyed gemstone, experiments
in jade, lacquer and glazes, and grew
a soaking boulder, mountainous, ravines
alive with overnight storms, until
the plane leaf’s stray hump
unfolded and rocked from the sudden stem’s
shock anomaly through certitude’s decay.
As well as IS&T, Paul Connolly’s poems have appeared in Agenda, Warwick Review, Poetry Salzburg, The Reader, Scintilla, Dawntreader, Takahē, Dream Catcher, The Journal, FourXFour, Seventh Quarry, Sarasvati, Envoi, Obsessed with Pipework, Southlight, High Window, Northampton Poetry Review, London Grip.