Snowdrop poem: Sundown

Sundown

In the lea of the broad canal,
its surface chopped to tesselates,
five head-low swans, beak on beak,
ruffed and clumped like a bride.

A fox snouts aside a percussion
of dead leaves, chances his eyes
on threshing bramble thorns, blunts
claws on hard clods, chases worms.

When the copper sun's last arc sinks
a woody crack rifles over lawns:
a sycamore bough fails; twigs tangle
like hand-grasps as the limb falls.

A burr of fur sits tight in an angle
of bricks, eyes wide and round. Wind
paddles her ears flat to her head;
she mewls for tall, warm interventions.

In the air, an edge of a giant
forms and fails, reforms: tatters
of papers and plastics swirl as shanks
as it strides away from the town.