POEM IN WHICH I DO NOT BORROW ANY OF THE WORDS 
FROM A POEM BY HELEN MORT AND USE ALL OF THEM IN A 
DIFFERENT ORDER TO CREATE A POEM IN WHICH

I stepped up
towards mother pines
on the brighter moor,

I saw where five deer
more ragged than
the rose that flickered
lapped every God
to water,

I followed the river back
like each of the otters
at Ullapool did
for them and who/
whatever waited I
at the garden's edge.

The night that never
followed stood on
through fur supple eyes
they-darned in mother,

and Rannoch forest
graceful from
the kingfisher south
where we saw the night
stealing in-between
time,

the pound-coin holidays
she brought out to hers-
the watched ones
looking for their ribs,
and those swears that saw them
the same before teatime.

I must have been
that window in my middle
because I have
no memory of them,
of the house we were then-

the years more
coloured than the trees,
fish-bone closer
than hooves.

7 and encased in the velvet catsuit purple with the white piping, on the edge
of a bridge where water slipped past like a ghostling

i was- with my little feet dangling and the roaring in my reddened ears saying
SATURDAY as dad was one-hand pushing the clouds out and mum

was home with John Player and her radio and roasting things like a cricket
rubbing her legs together and crying or whatever

so here we were on Timmy’s Lane where lovers came this essex Shangri-La
where i would give boys great head later on

and i was staring into the water which rushed under me and through the pooh stick
tunnel but all i knew was i hate this catsuit in the shape of me

so i put myself further on the rim and tipped my body off until i was falling for
miles and miles upside down like a Red Arrow with smoke which wrote

O God and my face hit the water and the waves came inside the suit and blew
me up and i heard dad say ho! and he came in the river and grabbed me

with a hand the size of that kid’s house whose dad was put in prison and i was
saved not dead and the smoke from the spinney spilled into tears and

cried me all the way home in my cocoon of skin down Crow Lane where the
crows made nests and swooped me up in caws when the sun came up

and onward still to Goblin Hill where i was made- over the sewer and lost plastic
men the graves of cats and all the nooks out back where the chickens

screamed