Low Heath
Wake hearing driven rain
and darkness.
Little lights along the shore.
People shuffle in corridors,
doors clunk, beeps reveal patients’
oxygen, heat, blood-force.
I dreamed a sickly landscape,
my home above the harbour,
low heath, pestilent country,
sweating sand, gravels, clay,
gorse, heather, bracken
left untilled with reason,
rhododendron-poisoned soil,
quarry scrape, no dung.
A temperate swamp
gives up its spores
to a dusty wind.
Is the blackness shifting,
blowing away?
Simon Bowden is a retired broadcast journalist. His poem Manhood was commended in the Ver Poets open competition judged by Andrew McMillan. He has organised events with actors, music and visuals to bring modern poetry to a wider audience.