2 poems by Tom Branfoot

Overshoot

Buzzard calls fall in a snow madrigal

astonished vole

in the ice-corrupted meadow

I come from a voiceless place

fooling my guild with vivid silence

cardinal pylon, a birthday candle

I was born in a bramble paddock

a protectorate

enduring interminable drizzle

Walking as if things are easily conjured

And all the inaugural dirt

of fire and erosion

Fragile roof sign

exposed to inarticulate sky

Biomass plant knits plumes

around magpies

roosted in hazel sacristy as if

tuning into provisionality

Exploiting all air as bliss

Columbine

I prefer you in white

yolked with yellow stamen

and pistil; taxonomy

of doves and pigeons. Five

spurred necks flock to Harden Beck

upending the stem

to find an iridescent beetle

interred in your floral cote

receiving brackish signals.

Downstream a dipper fluctuates

on its amateur rock. A name

tainted by massacre, I

shake loose the violent pollen

from its word-hoard. High

summer when the culver bloom

nestles in a browning creche

light coruscates on the beck

overdone crests, immaterial, spent

__________

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. His debut collection Volatile is forthcoming with the87press. His poem ‘A Parliament of Jets’ is shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.