In Ulvik

My love of Olav H. Hauge knows no limits. The book “Luminous Spaces” is, for the want of a better phrase, my poetic Bible. I was particularly moved by a diary entry in which he complains of the poor print of a painting that adorned the wall in his hospital room and how the artificially nature made him want to be home all the more… Shout out to Kirkdale Books!

In Ulvik

When the mountains speak, I listen, teasing 
their raw songs to paper leaf; their stories 
told in ink and charming hearsay; their stone 

words frozen in wind and rattling pine;
their foss in onyx pools as deep as stars.
And when the mountains are mute, the rising 

noise is mine; their silence exasperates 
even the soundest insight and I’m bound 
in duck cloth and canvas again... again.

This London is charmless - its impasto 
grooves lost to chattering printing press
If I could fracture its stern oak binding 

and free the pigment to disinfected 
air, that phthalo mist that kills the clear light 
of Westminster could return to the sharp

drumlins of home, where I could charm feathers
from red throated loons, count sweet, ripe cherries 
and sward apples, waking to mountain song.