• Walk up a long ago road covered with moss
    Into the woods
    There's snow forecast
    I want to lose myself in a blizzard
    No snow here though
    Just distant traffic and birds speaking to one another
    Sit on a dead tree
    Grey sky

    Grey feathers spread across the moss
    A beak: bloody flesh still attached
    Red against pale green
    A siren, far off

    All around the crows shout about me
    Snagged by brambles
    Whipped by thorns
    I dread other humans
    Tiny flakes fall
    Cold dead skin

    Push through spiny undergrowth
    A muddy plateau. Frozen ruts
    The sound of traffic and aeroplanes
    Hard to think
    Leaning against barbed wire
    Two flocks of birds, above the bypass

    An unattended fire dying
    A circle of hot grey ash
    A bird dips then plummets
    A cold east wind
    Into the woods. A snowy path
    Walk into an abandoned quarry
    Caves everywhere
    Warm air that smells of blood drifts out
    And I'm too scared to go very far in

    I lose my way
    Emerge blinking from the woods
    A golf course
    I'm hungry
    I wish it would snow
    A dark pubic thicket in the crotch of a beech
    A ruined house
    A sign; private woods no access
    Branches glow in the sunlight

    Look out at the sky from the top of this hill
    I think I'm surrounded by blizzards
    One swoops over
    Walk into it, the sun still out
    My shadow clear as summer
    Snow down my neck
    Watching valleys full of snow blow towards me
    No shelter; eyes watering from the cold wind
    Snow faster and faster, tapping on my coat
    Falling fast
    Hypnotic
    I'm becoming a snow man
    Hands too cold almost

    Sun in the distance
    This will be over soon

    The cloud departs: a trailing ghost.