This poem is taken from PN Review 166, Volume 32 Number 2, November - December 2005.

A Bunch of Tales

Michael Haslam

I caught a minute of what might have been the story:
     a stray pack of clouds in dark advent,
december hounds out on a run,
     down high brown moor-side. Then it's gone.
I nearly lost that one.

A bunch of dreamers in their nightwear
in a van who do repairs bring parody
to the affair. Black Mare. Crying hoarse
on the edge in high volumes of air. A black maria.

I was on that case and come to write
it out in a report, and there is no one here
but mist and smoke, the stubs of
     burned forest.
Shafts of phoebus glide the dusky glade and light
     on ferns, and fairy moats. And here I find
the comic in, just twiddling returns. I ask:
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