JLM Morton – Spirit of Place

Genio Sancto Hvivs Loci

                Altar inscription, Corinium

I couldn’t find it in the broken statue

or the stillness of the alcove. It cast

uneven pools of light on to my skin

and I chased it, felt it slip around

away from me like shoaling roach.

The sour milk of dandelions

on my tongue. Ancient goat horns

spilt all over

me, a double cornucopia of high wolds,

black foals feeding at dawn, pylons, ploughed fields.

I stumbled

into

the nettles.

Allowed the river’s silt to soothe me.

The darkness of the icehouse.

All of my love became caught

on the filaments in a brachiopod’s shell

and my heart took root. A fleshy pedicule

on a hill that was once a shallow sea.

I laid down on a grassy patera,

asked no questions at the altar, cannot say

what it is that I have found, or how.