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David Cobb, UK

St. Edmund's Eve

A north wind and heavy weather. The sky black with threatened snow; air laden with the smell of bonfire smoke, seeping through ventilators of the car. Forest trees solemnised by a sudden overnight fall in temperature; dank leaves sheening yellow. On the skyline, a wind turbine flailing against the approaching storm.

out of the clouds
in desperate flight
the noonday moon

The road ahead clear no further than a very old man might throw a small stone. Behind a hearse and its accompanying limousine a line of slow moving cars, a Jag, two Fords, an impatient Porsche. After three preparatory hops, a crow hoists up from the white line on the road.

in the middle lane
more of the spines laid flat–
the hedgehog skin

Such illumination as this day offers defines against a tree the pallid outline of our first patron saint, Edmund, Martyr, King of the East Angles. Bound as a target and riddled with arrows by the heathen Dane, decapitated, head kicked into bushes several furlongs from his other remains. Took the searching monks a month to stick them all together again. That night, at my cottage, I see a film about English soldiers trying to keep the peace in Bosnia. Theirs is not the "camp" bravado of St George of the Caucasus, more the long-suffering obduracy of St Edmund of Bury, whom the dragon-slayer usurped. Soft as our native grit.

torso, this world,
struggling to bring together
its head and its heart

Note: St Edmund's Day is celebrated on 20 November

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