The Weeing of Wiltshire

She stooped that day

a British flower returned to the soil
and blessed the earth chalk on chalk
while mum pixies watched from prickly leaves
she reconciled broken rock from ages gone.

Flint-knappers, knights, and monocled dandies
and clinking pubmen felt it down their necks
 a ripple of afternoon sunlight quenched the thirsty rock

a mercury serpent

and leaking in salved the salvific whiteness of the soil
and soiled it not

between Horse and Smithy there's no bit of difference
in the girl and her Island

by Carnuntum
dedicated to my beautiful wife

                                                                                             

by Carnuntum