Mezzogiorni di Anguilla

From the chilled algae to lukewarm brine
estuary, rivers roughen clasp black brindle moist ventrice
marram grass, fescue rasp, bristles, she feels
her way gelid, aspic of her black capillaries
evasively shines writhes, shivers, silveringly
from nerve to crown of nerves
your exacting filaments shine
in your grieving face
for something obstinate adheres its crumbs
of soil and grit to your elver skin
cilia, tubes worn to close about their
tunnels from this lutine dredge
as a blind-worm slides
through the lush dew-rinsed grasses
slithers, ciliary nerve-whip propels
enislanded, both
tributary and archipelago
your sleek grey peninsula seeks
softer stones, mud pools, funnels
where stagnancies of brim filter
harbours of microbe harvest
against spring, autumn floods
watching, watching, waiting waterfalls
a transitory pulse away, your lithe rake
in your transitive, transitional
heartbeats prodding
your sombre intelligence
rain-branch, blue-green
for tides freighting silts
you are seeking the skin of a conclusion
eyes crusted, teeth’s range
for finer muds, a green breath
branches torch-lashes
carries silts freight from
his. your satin’s capillary
tuber, wire, you
translate a landscape
you sink to burrow in the river’s song
dumb to the articulate lias
in lime, marl polished bone of mountains
fecund roots of streams
you are discovered, trembling,
pulsing a sepia vein
shaded by torches of leaves
shaded by lit leaves
nests in the rainbow’s root
and so you exist
your ritual is to make explicable
these tides, this lightning
carved iris, your familiar
is your satin velvet a
sacrament, questing
open-lash, your ? and !
a consummation?

Colin Honnor is a widely published poet in numerous magazines in print and online, including: Poetry and Audience, 21 Years of Poetry and Audience Anthology, Agenda, Outposts, The Rialto, Fire, Smoke, Orbis, Ore, Iron, Lines Review, Envoi, Staple, Sepia, Hybrid, Poetry Nottingham, Tops, Pennine Platform, Ammonite, Terrible Work, Tandem, Odyssey, Headlock, The Swansea Review, Iota, The People’s Poetry, Outposts, 4×3 Various Artists, and many others. Collections, mostly from small presses and private presses include From Underground (Mirabilis 1986); Dante; Cavafy; The Somme; (Yew Tree Press). English Poetry is forthcoming from the University Press of America. A former editor of Poetry and Audience, he runs a fine arts press in the Cotswolds.