Mark Leech

Hobgoblin Gate

Glob light fat in the sky     late heat's smell sinking root deep Last year's leaves   first of night                               she waits, not buried not forest     waits    as concrete waits for water's finger to push split it, run white grains down the valley bottom              Wound in branches breath a fly foot on her tongue's edge unseen      Steps crack round her head      walkers muttering the path shadows them up      She still       still lips tight as bound twigs – keep her second life in                      no longer binding fortune over hope                           The path's half moon cups her hunches her down    onto her name

 

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Too named by kind and place        This is her overripe, bird raddled                 This sun-sink hour walkers slip pause    red moon up     rooks calling sleep A car talks under trees She bites her solid lips one lit house in her mirror eye Better to leave (for towns' safe alleys warm waste from kitchens)                                             But she's in the leaf pile stubborn as bone eyes out for stars                             She waits – one night something fire will come through wood and dark    press itself in her   trunks and branches crack

 

It rushes hungry out toward the gate