Tom Branfoot

Axe Edge Moor

I was running away from my body
in the fog toward your body
across vacant moorland

two golden plover exchange sonar
nab, outrock, jutstone
we step down into words for mist

brume, mizzle, haar
disappearing the moor
volant contours split smirr

their summer plumage is gritstone
we are back at the nab, no
back at the trig

no, back
at the words for mist
sonar, convergence, bleak

plover from pluvia meaning rain
I was running away from your body
in the fog toward my body

Tom Branfoot is a poet and critic from Bradford, and the writer-in-residence at Manchester Cathedral. He won a Northern Writers' Award in 2024 and the New Poets Prize 2022. He organises the poetry reading series More Song in Bradford. Tom is the author of This Is Not an Epiphany (Smith|Doorstop) and boar (Broken Sleep Books), both published in 2023. His debut collection Volatile is forthcoming with the 87 press. 

Tom said the following about his poem:

Down in Buxton the weather was fine, yet ascending Axe Edge Moor, fog expanded, and I could barely see beyond my arm – I could barely see my partner. Birds took this opportunity of atmospheric shelter to traverse the moor; I could only apprehend their contours. We heard a golden plover but could not see it, I stood under the shadow of a curlew, its sickle beak lanced ghostlike through me. I was so enamoured by the fog’s glamour that, to quote Peter Gizzi, I felt like ‘an incident trapped in thick description’. I had lost my body and became an incident of language.