Listen. Once the statue breathed, a mask was nailed to the grave and the priest dreamed of sweat and women.
Then an insect pierced the sky, a yellow moon kissed the tombstone good-bye and the colour of grief challenged young eyes.
Summer suffered in the storm. Heaven spoke its secret name. And mankind wept the tears of truth.
Now a sleeper chills the village, a snake grows wings, singers wake, a finger crawls and churches fall.
Dancers float and sand comes raking over the bones of a carved shell, starved to death on a dry river bed.
Soon, a stranger, always alone, will wander under funeral dust as ruin haunts the mustardseed coast.
Ancient gods grumble, shape enemy prayers, mirrored in snow, riding on the rim of a star.
A broken tongue bares its anger. Brothers see a father crying – a seedless saviour in a twilight world.
Bill Lythgoe
Bill Lythgoe lives in Wigan, England and has been writing poetry seriously for about six years. During this time he has won four prizes and been published in Writing Magazine and been shortlisted by them several times. He won second prize in the Sentinel Literary Quarterly competition and was published in their Oct-Dec 2013 magazine. He has also won prizes awarded by Fire River Poets, the Wakefield Red Shed and Nottingham Poetry Society. He has been published by Earlyworks Press, Strong Verse and Southport Fringe Poetry.
