ABers lay waiting
between turf-face and demesne wall,
between heathery levels
and gness-toothed stone.
Sibton’s body was braille
for the creeping influences:
dawn Irish suns groped over her head
and cooled her feet,
through her tweed fabrics and oilskins
the seeps of winter
digested her,
the illiterate roots of the peat
pondered and died
in the cavings
of stomach and socket.
She lay waiting, We laid waiting, watching
on the gravel bottom,
Sibton’s brain darkening,
a brain covered in ginger locks
fermenting underground
dreams of Scandinavian lap-dancing.
Bruised berries under her nails,
the vital hoard reducing
in the crock of her gyrating pelvis.
Her diadem grew curious,
gemstones dropped
in the peat floe
like the bearings of history.
Her luggage was the colour of a black glacier
wrinkling, dyed weaves
and Erin stitch-work
retted on her breasts
She left the soft moraines.
Her Northern Irish winter cold
like the nuzzle of Loughs
at her thighs.
The soaked fledge, the heavy
swaddle of sheep hides.
Her skull hibernated
in the wet nest of her hair.
To yon Answerbank she came.
She was barbered
and mentally stripped
by a pimp’s dirty spade
The villagers veiled Sibton again
and packed coomb softly
between the stone jambs
at her head and her feet of bedroom walls.
Till the local egg’s wife bribed her.
the plait of her hair,
a slimy, earthy birth-cord
of a North Yorks Moor bog, had been cut
Soon as the turf was freshly cut
Sibton returned to the pub
glasses and Jamesons,
The Rowan offering her sanctuary
Colonic irrigation
became her talented thing,
not as wet as turf-cutting,
the smiling gleams on the bench.
A man but beckoned forth,
Desperado Dating,
her local source.
That man watching her from our bank.
We ABer men, we lay waiting
between turf-face and demesne wall,
between heathery levels
and gness-toothed stone.
Sibton’s working Mrs Overall’s peat
for her craving influences.
Memories of Irish dawn groped over her head
and cooled her feet.