tottenham marshes on the night of the solar eclipse

by Shazia Hafiz Ramji

sun over moon brings a slow skim of rain

over the wimpling marshes   a bike pulls out the dark

needling a path through the blotted evening

the stories of those who were dead

and from the dead return

are mine now.  since i am at the procession of my life

my own six swords

the ferryman   the woman   the child all the same   leaving

silt water   blue water   bog water  dammed

water   there are no metaphors

for water   or the train hauling itself over the tracks after the euro rail

only distance, speed, and time

no choice but to see life as a gift   the way a fox can only be seen

through the bush when it moves         alighting an old us

coming alive by not looking for

the other spotted in the wild

asking the question of the hunt begun or over

by not being in the endless time of blue and green

the world as we know it in maps sold everywhere   no

this life is formed in an excess of water

amniotic seams and the breathy kindling of gulls

glassed through new roots   sedge   reed   grasses   bee orchids

names given to the slow sentience of our remembering

calling in the season of our nakedness.