bromyard

a buzzard gyrates in the sky,
crawling like a homesick angel
up the ladder formed by countless swarming clouds,
a sickly whirlpool of whites and greys.
below in the mud we are cutting
grooves in the sludge with our feet,
and clasping our arms
around each other’s backs so we resemble
a coin broken in two and after many years
soldered back together, rough metallic seams
winding over old scars.

we carry the festival fields home
in the folds of our jeans and the pleats
of our grubby hands. mile upon mile of filthy sky
grants a wedge between our bodies
and leaves us flailing, spitting out
the weekend grime from the roughly dug pits
of our mouths:

yesterday these dank holes were pressed
chastely together, as if the world had folded over
and two rabbit warrens had for a moment
become one long twisting river of mud,
rushing together with no way out,
no way in,
just a jumble of grime seeping through
cracks in our skin and
fixing itself to our warm internal organs.

when the mud dries it goes hard and stale,
tracing filthy fractures across our bodies
which in the right light resemble maps, but
impossible, impossible to follow the routes laid out
and find our way back to the mud-soaked moments
of the festival weekend in bromyard.