B Little Boy Blue

little boy blue
in your watery barrow
sticky-webbed
folds set in
treacle-black bone-skin
interrupted
open mouthed
about to tell..

then a baltic wave
of headscarved migrants
returns for the carrot harvest
arms stained to the elbow
with ginger pulp and cochineal
to fill the jam-jars

whilst towering boatmen
angular blonds
bleached long ago
traipse the salt-flats
wondering
if they ever left home

drawn like moon-struck moths
to the fen-mere's
rotting sweet breath,
deep as a mead-cup
fermenting to dark must,

then turn like fen-folk,
drunk with home-pain
who cleave -
leave clay-cold cocoons
as still as bark-bones,
swamped souls bound home.

but where is the boy
who looks out from the deep?
he's under the fen-frost,
fast asleep.