Snake out of the concrete oven,
the miles of basking suburbs,
business parks and gravel pits,
through parched fields, fleeting stations
then further still into the south country.
Out along the Kennet and Avon
a girl in a hat and cut-off denim
waits her turn at the lock gates
as Thor and Celestia float low
on their watery doppelgängers.
Sugar-gold grass leans into the heat.
Over a redbrick farmhouse
a black oak looms dusty
and huge as a thundercloud.
A combine turns in a field of grain.
The Vale of Pewsey,
the Westbury White Horse.
The rising edge of Salisbury Plain.
You might think there’d be kites,
on a day like this. Forked tail kites
sketching out their territory of sky
scoping for voles in the corn.
But no. Just a caution of rooks,
a lumber of wood pigeons.
The man across from me
says there haven’t been
so many kites recently.
Burnt allotments, a woman
sunbathing on a recliner.
A shepherd’s hut on blocks.
A donkey scratching on a fence.
Two dogs exercising their jaws.
Then Frome cattle market and Bruton dovecote.
How can they water all these cows?
Sloping from one pool of shadow to another.
How will they feed them next winter?
Hillside sheep – white flakes
on the bare scalp of the Earth.
Maybe those missing kites
were just gathering to leave,
like swallows in September?
Maybe there were always strings attached.
Southern England in a heatwave,
the land crawling to the well
only to find a borehole of bones.
This last day of July. 2026.
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