Robert Saxton

 

Walk, Don't Lie Down

Unlike the long, the tall compare one another easily.
To gravity we surrender our litter and our grief.

Around the corner of a block, possibilities muster
like Cherokee high on a ridge, ready for action.

Horizons weakly advise a vertical species,
surprised to step onto the world’s oldest tortoise.

Pedagogues, flyfishermen, waiters, pedestrians,
we all have our double star of feeling,

seldom seen but always immune from siege
within our ambit – the mouth and the shoes . . .

 

*

 

. . . whose ferrymen are the hands, ferreting softly,
unaroused by circuits of the cancelling self,

siblings who prefer not to touch, though they will
in extremes or briefly to encourage the others

gesturing to a rosebowl of ears and eyes.
They have two distinct approaches to gloves,

both active—to escape or to animate.
While the live parts learn to fumble, get lost

or stuck, sag, miss notes while offering deepest love
from its narrowest place, flake showers of skin

like snow, the dead parts, like trees, still grow.

 

 

Copyright © Robert Saxton, 2007.

Robert Saxton is editorial director of a publishing company in London. His second Carcanet/OxfordPoets collection Local Honey appeared in August 2007.