The Tuesday Poem: Bog People

Peat moss, Rannoch Moor, Grant Dixon

I was lucky enough to be a runner up in the recent poetry competition 'Sonnet or Not' for poems of 14 lines.  This one was 'Highly Commended' and published (under a pseudonym) in the new edition of Cannon's Mouth. 

Bog People

Out on the moor, that one time,
our bodies on the drenched heather
braced against the slip and suck
of something more than weather –  
the elemental fibres of the dead peat
threading our selves together in the old way
the rituals of the slain gods, noosed,
thrown, cheating the process of decay
in the brown tincture of the bog
supple and folded as worn leather.
Over and under, we repeat their lives
the belief, the dying, the un-resistable desire
that lays us down among the gorse and whin
eye to eye with roots, the bare sky looking in.

© Kathleen Jones

The Tuesday Poets are back after the Christmas and New Year break - take a look at what they're up to on the Tuesday Poem hub site which you can find here.