Prelude

Sunday

Days before knock the door, open, come in, hello,
they come to check everything. He doesn’t call it hunt,
it has another name: The Wheatland.

I am thinking of the Garage I worked at when
my hand is on its way to meeting his
and I remember what it is.

It is too far gone to stop it.
I see you have cats, he says. Grin.
They’ll have to be kept in. Smile. Polite.

These types are locked together, camouflaged.
As hidden as the Mafia, except for their guns shouting
their exact, exact, exact location, their cartridges left in the bracken.

*

Wednesday

The kitchen window has a car showroom looking through it,
a pre-rehearsed pageant of land rovers,
a line of red horses parading

down the lane to the neighbour’s drive.
Where their children miss school to pass trays
up to them, hand out long glasses, get the hounds set.

I close the curtains on what we have agreed to,
gather up my brothers like a mob, grab
the old pitchfork, the spades,

march down the lane after them,
shovel their leftovers, heap it hot, steaming,
then, when it's cooled, spread it under the rose bushes.