Kate Camp
On reading Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The
morning air smells of leaves.
I see the paper in its plastic
bag
the path overlaid with fine green moss
houses’ windows
white with curtains.
Beyond the neighbours’ yard the hills
the white
sphere of the spy station
and above, the white circle of the
moon
about the same size.
*
I
saw my father on film the other day.
He was whatever age I am
now.
He raised his eyebrows, clasped his hands
behind his
back. He bent his body from the waist
as a crane might, or one
of those novelty birds
that sips like a metronome from the side of
a glass.
He smiled and moved his eyes around,
showing this
side of the whites, and the other side.
*
In
the morning, on lovely mornings
when I step into that air
I
expect to see a corpse
to be the one who discovers the body.
I
can see it, face down on the neighbours’ lawn
one arm above its
head
its knee bent
as if climbing a wall of grass.
I
look up to the hills
over where the dead body is not
to the spy
base, the spider’s egg
with the moon above it.
I don’t
want to leave this world.
