Crook 70
Seth Crook
THEY SAY GHOSTS WALK
on their own layer of history.
Roman soldiers appear waist-up,
march only by hypothesis.
Neanderthals show upper heads,
communicating by eyebrows.
Knights lack feet, their horses lack knees.
Popes hover over low churches.
High-crown kings sit on short half-thrones.
Bowing courtiers are mere buttocks.
BY THE MECHANICAL MAGIC
of the camera’s focus button,
the wrack exposed by low water
becomes abstract. Obvious forms
turn into nameless parts, parts fade
to clusters of colour. What is that?
becomes a good question to ask,
until the rule of classification
becomes a floating bowler hat.
Though, like the tide, it will come back.
Seth Crook lives on Mull. He is transitioning into a seal. His poems have most recently appeared in such places The Rialto, Magma, Envoi, Causeway, Northwords Now, Far Off Places, The Glasgow Review of Books, The Nitrogen House, Antiphon, Snakeskin, Algebra of Owls. And anthologies such as Spindrift (Federation of Scottish Writers).