#amwriting #poem #poetry Fen - 2

Fen - 2

There were always magpies on the tar-papered roof
of the crossing keepers lean-to. Watching the line.
Watching for the carrion swept aside by the London train.
The birds were fat, and fierce enough to fight the rats
that riddled the sandy bank, that ran into the flat
infinity of fields and sky, that almost made the track
into a ladder. They paced their perch like grenadiers,
shimmered blue in the half-hopped turn, then eel black
and milk, as they cocked their head to watch again.
On the table by the filigree gate, lay carrots bunched
by rubber bands, with silk haired roots like puppet strings
and round their crown a purple taint, potatoes bearing
soily eyes, cabbages still wet with dew, and parchment
skinned yellow onions hardened by the late spring frost.
I would wish the birds good morning, and count them
hoping for a boy, and eye the sweating gooseberries
veined within their poly-bags. Always on a Wednesday
we made this occasional trip, sometimes on bicycles
but mostly on foot, to this whitewashed house on the edge
of the world. So plain it was, four windows and a door,
with a rose bush by the lean-to, and lavender in the borders.
But what kept my fingers crossed, in the eye-spy of the walk,
was that the whiskery woman who tended to the gates,
for tractors and the doctors car, would come out
to take the money, and from her apron pockets feed me
liquorice.