Purple toadflax and pale flax, kidney vetch and teasel,
hawkweed, canterbury bell; ox
-eye daisy, valerian for sleep and viper’s
bugloss, bird’s foot trefoil and roast beef plant
the most stinking iris policed by the buff-
tailed bumblebee, genus bombus,
waves of abandoned energy
draw the grasses from mute materiality
to make what the golfers shun as dance music
under stunt kites the rare lady
slipper opens her tight little chest.

An obelisk takes shelter in a cloud, filthy
rim of sulfur
dioxide from Pas-de-Calais
just in passing
like the garbage scow the ferry the scow
terminating at    alighting where
Realise the value
of our lives. Without thought
of reward, patchwork monolith on a layby
perpetually poking at the dead
behind the lifeguard station.

Along chalk and wire such abundant grasses,
poppies of course, mal-
low, cat’s ear, the seabird at eye-
level monitoring the drop
from the face: all white be-
low, lined
with uncounted species. You may
or may not have been there.

Heading to the Citadel, built to repulse
the French now closed to Europe detention centre
dispersed inwards, now hawked
for filming location a gaping moat
filled with barbed wire a barracks, isolation
unit sign whose remote eye keeps
on the gleam of a head
going underwater, now too blue
even to look at, fragrant
horseshoe vetch and orchid, milk
wort, blues fluttering down to flint

urchins trapped in the rock where the wave

cut the ineliminable dawn this

day the sun stood still

if you were also there
can you see him run or swim
didn’t you also wish
it could be lasting, could be good

Andrea Brady