Issue 11: November 2005

Lara Frankena | Sandra Greaves | Jen Hadfield | David Hale | Paul Perry | Philip Wilson

DAVID HALE

Panic

Through the wire
into Whiteway,
past the torched bus,

walking along inward
rootlines, lulled
by the sunlit underlay

of ridge trees, no sense
of deepening cloud,
the approaching hail

that sends me ducking
from trunk to bough-splay
down to the clearing

at the wood's heart.
In under the eaves
of the cabin there,

sobered by the wind's
adrenaline, the deluge
on saw-horse and stacked hazel

that backs me into a doorway
reeking of diesel
and uneasy detail —

spent cartridges,
a child's shoe,
the mug of withered bluebells

on a stained car seat,
the sudden impulse
of listening nearness

of being on shifting ground
of slipping into wood gothic
so strong,

that I'm flushed out into cold rain
and hurrying away
down through the long dripping wood.

 

The Gift

To receive a gift is to be honoured,
many have I received from those I've taught:
pale usquebaugh, shark's teeth and silver drachma,
each a puzzle to be unpicked, a statement
or response to a set of signposts through the maze.
So a small spherical piece of camel dung
wrapped in a screw of paper from the slopes
of Mount Sinai — concise yet cryptic, what could I say but thanks
and cup it in my palm noting its tint and texture,
a little grainy — the colour of good shit —
and lift it to my nose to inhale its perfume.

Were I a wild beast one waft would determine
its host's sex, age and state of health,
from which pilgrim track it came,
one of a string laden with panniers
picking its way up over rock and sand
stooping to tear at shoots of thyme and camomile,
to hear the rich intestinal music of its belly
the sound of air escaping through dry cheeks
as it gazed out over blue distance,
the sphincter contracting at intervals
to release yet another steaming berry…

But as I am not, instead receive such
skewed images as the scraps in the dark
cupboard labelled desert and camel allow,
and tend towards interpretation,
as if the entrails of the beast lay before me:
were we talking skincare, the merits of recycling,
or was this a comment on the way I look
at 5 to 9 each Thursday morning at the Centre for Science and Art?
To receive a gift is to be honoured.
In the face of such youthful generosity,
I wonder what might I give in return?

 

Deer Skinning

From the doorway I watch as the carcasses
are strung up to spin idly in hot sunshine,
sense the growing watchfulness

as the burly figure at the group's core
leans in to the cut, the tongue of his blade
flickers between flesh and hide.

Ten minutes is all it takes he grins
rucking the hide over knuckle and knee.
You get a taste for this: road-kill,

your neighbour's dog, it's compulsive.
And so it is, this swift disclosure
of the machine within, the powerhouse

of muscle and bone stripped down
like an old car: limbs unbolted,
brain extracted, tongue sliced out,

every part with a meaning, every part a use
to this man from the wilds of Hupa,
from sinew for bowstrings to flesh strips for smoking.

Despite disgust at blood,
a beast dismembered,
I can see the beauty of it,

this taking apart and making anew.
To make a bow you need a deer
he grunts tugging at corded sinew,

to catch a deer you need a bow,
and I can't but believe him.
How close to the surface our thirst for such things.

 

David Hale was born near Largs in 1958. He spends his time writing about
landscape, people and animals, and teaching at Ruskin Mill in Gloucestershire.