CHERISHABLES
Relics are material remains of saints which are venerated as signs of their continued presence in the world – The Oxford Companion to the Body
Nail parings, hairs caught
in a comb, a scurf of shed skin,
a shoe-strap or milk-tooth —
these are the room’s inhabitants,
and the sound of a fast river
running somewhere under the house
like smoke passing unnoticed
over the speckled surface of a mirror,
or the breathless cry of a child.
HARE-DOG
Romano-British brooch in the form of a hound (?)
Hedging and ditching
the length of the Ridgeway,
hiding and seeking
between ghosts of elm,
a quicksilver self — haring
and hounded — runs
in its slumber
through the old wilds
of our dreaming, a wane
of moon in its eye. Two shakes
of a tail before the kill
it’ll waken, the lickety-split of it
caught in dawn’s headlight,
pinned in mid-chase,
barely more than a glimmering;
some trickery out there in the mist.