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Bog Crossing


by Iain James Robb


Written within five minutes, being a parody of the artless vacuity of observational 'poetry'

(By Tedward Weeney and Seamus Spews)


The large wind in the treetop tells the blackbird its own voice. The yellow grainyard

resounds to the clodding of my farmer's clunking footseps. Winter is

growing colder at this time of year. The black bird is a wooden soldier, its tin hat

opens and shuts and is silent as the frost. We picked turnips once in Winter. The

grain has grown barren. Trees stand tall and bare. I walk the bog now

devoid of what August extended, in leaves, like book leaves, to its limners.

I write it now. You farting gargles of windy peaks among the branchlets,

forgotten sentinels of the sun that is no more as I cross through fields and boggy ditches,

this poem is finished. It is done. The big black bird is thin and wiry.

My pen rests in its woollen nest between two arms of my sleeves.

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