By Ben Tufnell
The presence that roams
the Common and side streets
by night, treading softly
through shadows,
haloed momentarily,
jaw slack to taste
the thick air, spooking
the ragged foxes, is conjured;
something pure and wild.
Waking suddenly, somehow lost,
I look out into white moon light
and see her, a silvered ghost,
flickering, fleeting, silent,
ice-eyed, shadow-shaped:
the weight of thought,
a necessary word
carved from heavy air
to balance influences.
Ben Tufnell is a curator and writer based in London. Poems have been published or are forthcoming in Anthropocene, Entropy, Fire, La Picioletta Barca, Rialto, Smartish Pace and Terrible Work, amongst others. Tufnell has published widely on modern and contemporary art and his most recent book is In Land: Writings About Land Art And Its Legacies (Zero Books, 2019).
More of Ben's work can be found here.