The beat of boots

I very rarely write prose poems - they are a weird halfway house between poetry and prose, genres which I prefer to keep quite separate.  However, my course is exploring lots of different experimental poetry, including the prose poem.


Uley Bury

Its circumnavigation drew me every Sunday, filling in lonely hours while he was fishing.  I could see his lake from the south-east corner, but that wasn’t the point; it was the retracing of steps made throughout the seasons, warm, dry, cool, cold, wet. And the treading in the footsteps of those who built the fort with their iron age tools, my footsteps beating out the rhythm of spades throwing up ramparts, axes chopping down trees for their walls, hammers building stalls to house their beasts in times of siege.

Always my feet led me round counter-clockwise, my head filling with words, tumbling around to the insistent rhythm of my boots. Words chose themselves, formed lines, rearranged themselves, were spoken aloud, joined others until they made a verse, repeated over and over until memorized. They had to last until my beating feet reached home; for the time it took for a pen to keep them safe in a notebook.

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