A prize....

One of these has won me a prize. Will find out out which and what on 19 April...

The Yare at Rockland

A distant V of geese
unwinds its thin skein
eastwards over swaying sedge.
Drawn swiftly, precisely,
thin, wet sepia strokes
blur against the lowering sky.

Smoke also unwinds
from floating houses
cast loose from land.
As land chases its edges,
four horizons ring us.
The land shifts; waterbound.

All our edges are water;
slick, like oil, like pigment
mulled against stone.

Tilling

I work the soil with my own hard hands
while my neighbour, his sky-blue eyes
ringed with granite, stalks the fields
like the elements that close hard fast around me.

The deep furrows in the raw sienna mud
are waterlogged with bits of the sky.
A rook swims across one, then another.
He raises his gun. The shot thuds in my chest.

Birds scatter like thoughts; outwards.
The kickback jolts his shoulder which is,
I know, suede-soft and softly tanned, giving
gently to the touch of my clay-hard hands.