Lung Wood – Edwin Stockdale

Lung Wood

I stand in my wellies,
a camera in my hand.

The land remembers the Border Reivers.
An abandoned sheep dip lies

at the side of the burn,
stones sculpted by hail, rain, snow.

A cheviot sheep’s skull coils
like an ammonite.

The pines mutter,
guard their secrets.

A gaudy pheasant, smug,
looks at me.

In the lung of the wood
pine needles now claim the mill-leat.

I disturb a roe deer;
she bounds.

Only the bracken knows
where she will hide.

Just before I came here
my Grandpa died:

the burn flows
as if nothing happened.

 

Edwin Stockdale’s debut pamphlet, Aventurine, was published in September 2014 by Red Squirrel Press.  He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham with Distinction and is researching a PhD in Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University.