Who dove down towards

dicings wearing only a size 32D bra,                                                                      

sharply – spikily – triform footwear,

and sporting two sprigs of Brythonic hay

inside a pair of skinny-jeans.

Soft-landing onto the coomb of my hands                                   

turning her hourglass tummy

to the huckleberries, white wine, worms,

all laid out for her rioting in expectation…                                          

one colossal gobble later and only a gloriously

backflipping maggot

bungles about on her excitedly custard-coloured nose.

And if all that’s not enough, well, wearing ass’s ears,        

an old Lamb’s-Quarters I’ve planted

with cabbage flowers, weedstalks, Bumblebee-Blossoms             

and Fog offers her a doggy-bag-worth of eeks!                                                                              

squeaks! insectile shrieks!          

to be brought back to her cold-water flophouse

on the fifth floor of the alder.                                                     

And although the planted Dragon-Fly’s pinafore

I paid for falls open

revealing only mush, although the Fly-Trap                             

is a plink of heads and droppings

and although she is a traditional woman

in the sense of – she doesn’t do dutch –     

she has given me licence to be so much…                            

naked, rain-ribbled,

wearing only my pointed hat, punting my way       

through zombies, dung beetles, skeletons             

breezily, beating the wind on my broomstick,                      

her wind the wings underneath me. 

With a forget-me-not fringe,

with a hand on the hagiographical coat                        

of a polecat, Maria Branwell manufactures cologne                       

from the spray of Jesus’s-Fingers        

pressed in her hand. She is the thing                         

that gets in your eye – the illiterate planet                         

of a teardrop that breeds cats                                                     

crossing their legs at the ankles – rubbing your face

into the churchdoors. Over this piece of greenwood          

the papyrus dustbowl                                                        

of the church-calendar                                        

inundates with activity…                           

and always now, at Gittisham, Queen Camel,     

Gulval, Charlton-All-Saints,                                 

the mitres of stirred-up churchmice              

run up your chair:                                                                     

Maria’s milk-teeth and Sunday bonnet        

pointing at your heart.

Note: Maria Branwell (1783-1821) was the mother of the Brontës. Jesus’-Fingers are a West Country name for the Bird’s Foot Trefoil.