I golden-shovel my self
after Paul atten Ash’s ‘Doggerlander’
raking through words like leaves. In
rootlines, the under-crust, fizz of fits
& starts, all compost-heaped funk of
life recycled, sweet fugue-like anamnesis
of all this moving towards an ending. I
golden-shovel my self, inhabiting dream
time, no longer human: subsoil dust; a
drought-stressed tree, its dialect of dream
intoning orisons to the nimbostratus that
hoards streams beneath streams and seeds
night-rivers. I darken at the edges of dusk
within/dusk without, eschewing Sun, and
mouth open in Moonsong, bleed out, let
go of all identity—I queer my self into the
earth, mulching down; in search of different
seasons, I fly south in echelon, bird versions
of me escaping this extractive nightmare of
a disaster-capitalist world/buried head of my
Whiteness—to find colonial shame. This self
is the gall-riddled husk—old growth I let fall
like a heavy coat of skin. Grief shovelled away
into little piles, the raking-through of hurt like
old memories, longing for the light that leaves
quiet skies to flood the forest floor. My leaving
is the still black ink of seas beneath stars, a
final reaching-out like the curlicue of a branch.
Paul atten Ash is the pen name of Bristol-based Paul Nash. He has been published by Broken Sleep Books, Butcher’s Dog, Magma Poetry, Nine Arches Press (forthcoming), among others. Prize shortlistings include: Alpine Fellowship (2023) and Ginkgo (2022, 2021). Searchlight Seasons, his debut poetry pamphlet, will be published by Atomic Bohemian (www.atomicbohemian.com) in October 2024. Paul is currently curating a multi-contributor contrapuntal ecopoetry project, We Dream in Green. For links to his published work see https://campsite.bio/northseanavigator and he can be followed online at X: @NorthSeaNav; IG: @north_sea_navigator; Bsky: @northseanavigator.bsky.social
Comments