Arrows
by and published in Edition Nine of Pomegranate
I can’t see you yet through lunar light, though even moonless, I couldn’t be sure of spotting you. But any line of three stars will do for a well-trimmed shaft, honed at the lathe. An iron head forged at the edge of the stream. Feathers from birds felled by arrows. More real than a thousand lessons on Hastings.
I think of my toy bow and arrow (range never greater than the garden’s length). In practice, it was the flight, the joy of machinery, never the target (always disappointing).
It’s two-dimensional, this missile: not even that. The lines are drawn and chalked up on the inside of my skull. A significance more liable to slither through your fingers.
If we choose to focus, this: directing to the vicious North, boring through blocks, the arrow fixes futures, bulldozes corridors which once split the way. Or if not: the star-arrow leads to the product of neurons meeting. A flash of incongruity. Which is to say, anywhere.
Paul Merchant
Paul Merchant is 18, and lives in Surrey. He is currently on a Gap year, and has just escaped to Peru from the nasty corporate world of London. His poems have been commended in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, and one has been published in The North.