The giant of Land’s End
Lives far from our town
Where the river bends
Towards barren down.
He shuns consensus
Malls and traffic jams,
Dodges the city census,
TV and dotcom scams.
His peat and thatch house
Crouches on a hillside,
Like a foxhole or dugout
Hidden from prying eyes.
His front door faces the sea,
His backdoor kisses the banks
Of a twisting, warbling estuary,
Where he fishes and thinks.
When he’s far from home
It’s to hunt wild game
He clobbers with a stone
If they keep still when he aims.
But he catches only what
He can eat and eats only
What he needs to live so that
Everything he touches solely
For life understands him,
Including trout hooked on
The end of a fishing line,
Held by him in his reflection:
A face of bunched features,
Big nose and fat lips,
Hair of a wild creature,
Broad shoulders, broad hips.
How our paths crossed
When I least expected
When all I’d heard said
He never existed,
I cannot explain,
I know he never wanted
Me to experience his pain
Or to leave me haunted.
I skip town with my spars
For a day in the country,
For some R and R far
From our town’s hurly-burly
That gets little done,
After a lot of plenty
Put in by everyone
Running on empty.
We drive till roads
Turn into tracks,
We park and unload
The SUV’s roof-rack.
Next we walk single
File and laugh till we hurt
At our bursts of jingles
From famous adverts
Stop for lunch by a bog
Beside a stream and drink
All the brews we lugged
This far, and give thanks
To Bacchus, for his smarts
About fermenting grapes,
To the country for its art
Putting up us town-types;
Pick a tree each to piss
Against and the same wind
To whistle into as we piss,
Wind whispering leaf and limb.
We’re tipsy, otherwise
We would not have done
What we do next, as unwise
As any drunk decision:
We decide to split up, go solo
For a while with the country,
For the quiet and rococo
Of our own company.
(Big mistake some say,
What were you guys thinking?
We weren’t. We were at play,
Our sole guide was instinct.)
There seems no harm
In it, and with cellphones,
Not hard to keep within arm’s
Length of a safe zone.
We draw straws for a pole.
I ...
