On Montpelier Hill we swallow lumps
of the road that chased us here. Beyond
the pale urban curve, we trace the body home
Haunted backs to a banquet room of burning

‘Circle three times and he’ll appear…’

Lick of sea, stacks of smoke, clash of headless spades
We mop up the ghostly hands we’re given

An inner city lung that coughed out grandparents
now long gone, to the concrete ankle where my children
kick an overflowing can
I see me punching trails, the da silence-heavy, two high-
wired dogs, the pine-drunk flies of Summer. Everything nipping
on another’s edge at once

‘They say a boy turned mute overnight at the sight
of a shadowless beast
And then of course, that priest…’

Later we’d bike it’s veiny bait, sing a warning fuelled
by devil’s piss and neck hair. So many of us huddled
we cast no shadow

I heard a woods is not a woods until reborn at least once
And what’s a trail without a girl, a dog and a cast
of biting beasts traipsing the length of its body,
looking for something to chase