A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (Excerpt)
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings –
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
And rests its soft machine on ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.
The Onion, Memory (Excerpt)
Divorced, but friends again at last,
we walk old ground together
in bright blue uncomplicated weather.
We laugh and pause
to hack to bits these tiny dinosaurs,
prehistoric, crenelated, cast
between the tractor ruts in mud.
In The Kalahari Desert (Excerpt)
The sun rose like a tarnished
looking-glass to catch the sun
And flash His hot message
at the missionaries below –
Isabella and the Rev. Roger Price,
and the Helmores with a broken axle
left, two days behind, at Fever Pond.
The wilderness was full of home:
- Craig Raine
