'Unmapped'

Unmapped

Here is a country road
blocked with rubble a few yards in

so it does not know
its journey any more
cannot call back sky and incident
from all the years

the buttoned feet
that tapped along it
Sundays in their close white chafe
petrol blush upon the leaves
when someone got out and got under
a Vespa lamp stinging the dusk

it cannot look up now
from its bends
at how tree-tops net the seasons
in stars of summer blood
and Christmas pearl

a bird sits on the rubble
looks inland
at the onwardness as was

the stroke on a map
each day more not there
sunk a touch deeper
through the tides of the earth