Atlas

early still-dark houses in jutted dawn
early horses with fog breath on the small hold
early office with cubist shadow lawn
early again-born Buddha disguised as a rock
early rock, perfect in blue field
early ducks testing the pond
early train rattling on forever-through-the-broad tracks
early smile pinned to a fence, Smack! you're
a kind of billboard
early medieval church sucked into the land
early unplanned children, idyllic in the lane
early lake of light, purple in the still-night dark, then
early spark of first sun, or is it truck lights?
early helicopter like a foetus in the blue-womb sky
early wood stream, sticks, car tires
early lunch, memories, early entire town, the smell of toast,
ten years, two stroke, down the line
early grazing cattle
early jumbling down-stairs to the kitchen
as they were off to work
early as ever, and running to the window
and watching the old red car disappear

Back to the Burrow

This is the music you've been waiting for;
foxes making noise in the still-warm ditch,
drum sticks on a birch log,
menthol smog behind the low-rise blocks.

Through the pipe-smoke glaze,
car lamps, fog, low tense bass.
At the jetty a scrap-heavy tug
gurgling in the diesel fog
and the gates to a garden of
you say, 'words with roots.'

Down by the estuary, boats like a thread
of wooden beads, the muddy bed slips down
to the sea, the port lights drip-
ing
an unreal but holy gleam.

Through the dark
you'll find a seamless shape,
like a white buoy with a face painted on
and a word scratched on
the front.

Words

Attaching them, sweeping up the rest
leaving the best until last

I walk for hours searching for a place
to stash the cut-offs.

Leaving my bags of letters behind
I fall asleep by the bronze shore.

When I wake up, you’re wearing them
and I’m your muse,

you manipulate my body
and create emotions out of it.

From the cliffs the people on the beach
are bright and curled

the punctuation of the world
and they know it.

This one is wading in the breaks,
splitting up the blue-black sea into sense,

this one is naked and her back
forms an arc

like a question mark in
the white-plate sand.

Matthew Spence is 23 and is studying for an MA in creative writing at UEA. His poetry is massively influenced by travel and Zen Buddhism and he often attempts to combine the two, which he hopes will create a sense of 'stillness within movement.' His poem 'Atlas'won the first prize for the Barefoot in the Park poetry festival (judged by Paul Maddern) and The Cadaverine is delighted to include the poem here. He blogs at http://spencepoetry.tumblr.com.