This is the illicit still of poetry
half hidden in the dry ditch beyond the hedge
firewater drunk from an old tin mug
it takes the skin off your throat
and drops it into your glowing stomach
and you don’t ask but maybe
wild crab-apples, turnips,
a handful of stolen barley, an old boot,
perhaps an incautious rat
who drowned in the middle of
drinking a wild dream
such as rat never had before
this the raw stuff
untaxed by rules
out here in the unfenced fields
not much spelling, punctuation,
vocabulary, grammar,
metre, euphony; if Emily
had been a prizefighter
she’d have breathed like this
but drunk, frozen breath steaming in the night air
seated on an old apple box
the stars never were so bright
the heart so near