Reading 36 - When The Shy White Deer First Appeared
When the Shy White Deer First Appeared
O Herald of mighty roars and trumpets loud!
In the dusky bow of dawn,
Our twin adolescence drawing,
We’d run the thin-stick moorland trail,
Past the Rowan and the crying Thrush,
Close-up on the five-mile loop,
With a little bit of fight between us,
On the steepness of the green-frayed hills.
And after football, latent in the long end of summer,
On the damp dewy ground, our bodies bruised and aching;
Skinny jigs - with attitude and quiff, showing off
Our brave Young Socialist T-shirts, posed Ariel like,
Stringing kites in a fierce electric storm,
Our love held light and leaking,
Shearing against a gull-grey sky.
Provocative; like spiky-haired robber monks,
We apply racing red war paint
Before each game, and with shaking fingers trace
Red fire across our perfect cider cheeks.
Pale morphed over battle-green seas, sleek
Marauding savages, malevolent dive-bombing hawks, twisting
In sharp winged acceleration, we thieve in pairs;
Relentless; the athletic beauty of our hounding dance,
Shelterless; the harsh punch of the stinging sea,
The hapless grist; kicked from the blue surrendering sky.
The silver prize once won, we sing our kinetic song,
The wild white joy of the ball, down the left-wing at pace,
To jink inside, only to drag my shot wide,
And wide of my friend’s despairing dive.
We lost the cup final as under sixteens,
Like wounded poets, our congealed ardour
Floundering on the ruined romantic ground;
When the shy white deer first appeared.
Shirtless; when the shy white deer -
Barely glimpsed through the thinning vapours,
Grey-lit by fringes of rimming light, The Dark Rigi
Rising, from the lips of his lustrous waters.
