'Goose, get out of this reflection, without me.' Photo: Biel Morro / Unsplash.
There Never Was Such A Goose
'There Never Was Such A Goose' by Jonathan Wooding
And think of your clay-pit lake, its bright water
a black slate spectral with depth –
inerrant, I believe, in fabulous mockery,
pauce ańd inflamed with sprung forms.
Then, stand on one rooted leg and world
changes; settle those back feathers
with your loose paddle before withdrawing
into sculpted goose-self, (paddle now hidden,
beautiful neck snaking that smart beak
beneath satisfied wing) and world
dissolves in avian perpetuity.
Rain falls and I retreat to a summer-house,
sit and open a damp Revised English Bible on, wait,
Ecclesiastes, and futility.
Lake’s
vacancy’s a cave. I can’t see in there.
Though, at some sort of angle, I’m still in-
errantly there, so to speak. I’m in
it – its watery nowhere – even sitting
withheld beneath raincrackle and
crepitance on the summerhouse roof.
I’m there in the black-gold mirror,
its non-existent tabula rasa,
its green weight, its deep content.
Goose, get out of this reflection, without me.
Woodbrooke College, May 2019
