The Little Black Month *

This is the Little Black Month.

Clouds blink:

Prestidigitation –

And the full moon is gone

Not seen to return,

No matter what the crick in the neck.

A body large as loss,

Silver as longing,

Heavy as bleakness.

It was there behind Winged Peace;

She was placing a wreath,

An olive ring, upon its brow,

Marrying the sky.

This is the little black month,

Ebon, under a wintering caul,                     

And we never feel so flung and far

From returning fire,

From the hope of the splitting seed.

Dan Belton February 18^th 2021

*The little black  month is a Romani term for February.

Ce n’est pas un masque

At the bus stop

This morning,

I reach into the dedicated bag

And find I have packed wrongly,

Morning hands grabbing all in the wake from

Bedroom gown, to front door

And in my hand I find

Not a mask,

But an apple.

I of course, curse,

Then laughing I hold it up to, and

In front of, my mouth

To look like Magritte’s

Le fils de l’homme ;

A leafed world held in its orbit around my face.

The bus goes past –

I breathe in orchards

I breathe the speech of hives,

The tang of memory.

I breathe in tart green evocation

From the fruit

To the branch

To the bark

To the loam

To the life.

Dan Belton

14^th February 2020