Field Notes

Gisele Parnall

In some pocket of travelling 
clothes, a rolled up 
fiver paves the way 
for homeward bound

I will remember the 
way my feet burnt
on the steps down to 
the sea and how you 
fit snug in the placid 
corners of the pool

the industrial planes
of France somehow took me
and my sack of memories 
to Nevada, where poplars 
stroke the edges of salt 
water cooling tanks 
and pasteurised milk 
seeps from VATS into ploughed 
fields where you sowed 
my hair follicles into dolls
of niacin plasticine

but in the end, the lines
which ran from head to 
tail were always too short,
as if you’d let your strands
fall from that bald patch 
on purpose. The fields
never forgave that loss, 
in their plush corkscrews of grass,
they’d remembered your form.