Poem Found in a Wood

by Ian Dudley

the low sun turns puddles
into sheets of sky indigo
where the moon gathers its white
and the custard and blood leaves
of a cherry tree dying
remember light

a pheasant puts its sore throat
to a trumpet a white-tipped propeller
whirls into the trees
cachinnating like a magpie
the wood fills up with roosting
a path polka-ed

with gold leaf
and blackened pennies
leads me to a mother with two kids
why do we have to go into the woods
the boy says I don’t hear the reply
because someone

is following me
the moon hardens into a netsuke
my dog races between the trees
trapped in a zoetrope
I forgot my notebook
and have to write on my skin