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Adjustments by Stephen Boyce




Adjustments 

We make almost all the decisive steps in our lives  

as a result of slight inner adjustments of which  

we are barely conscious. W G Sebald  


At this time of year 

when the ash keys purport 

to be redwings 

the passages of one’s life 

– whether long or short – 

appear narrow, almost tidal. 


I am on a mission you might say, 

a journey between winter fields. 

I am wearing the wrong boots; 

water is seeping through the eyelets. 


A pylon with starlings. 

And what are the chances 

they will form a slick, 

a seething murmuration? 


Repurposed and inverted 

the fingerpost reveals a footpath sign 

now pointing the way to the underworld. 


Grown older, I am revising  

my view on the circular route  

as the only worthwhile journey.  

There and back afford contrast, 

the wind in your good ear now  

and the sea below  

surging, rippling, slopping. 


Because a goose hoots like a steam train, 

because a road in the sun is a lake, 

because the poplar leaves gush like a stream,

because a chance encounter is a lucky break

I keep my ear to the air, lift my eyes above the hedge line.

It will be alright.





Stephen Boyce is the author of three poetry collections, Desire Lines (Arrowhead 2010), The Sisyphus Dog (Worple 2014) and The Blue Tree (Indigo Dreams 2019) and three pamphlets. He is co-founder of Winchester Poetry Festival and lives in north Dorset. stephenboycepoetry.com

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