In the light before rain
counting the hard little
yellows of the dayseyes I went
down the sea-opened valley –
a neat country it’s said
of parkland and flood plain
squared like the blind man’s garden
between the waters.
Sang goodbye to the elms,
glimpsed by the canal
blue smokey lift of a heron,
accepting my birthday.
How the shadows move in
at such news and are strange
in the light. This feather
left for his marker my brother
the crow had dropped by the goalpost
seems a dead man’s finger
keeping his page
in the unfinished biography.