Surveyor’s Riddles: Twelve
I was more than halfway through life’s
wood, I would not say I was lost but I could not
see my way. I sat down and got out my sandwich
and before I knew it I was having 20 winks,
and Management came to me in my sleep
and lifted me above the walls of paradise
showing me my leafy grandparents
just reaching for that decisive divisive
fruit. I woke to find my lunchbox empty
and no memory of having eaten my
‘petit filou’. The birds sang mockingly.
A squirrel dropped something from a tree.
Giles Goodland is the author of Gloss (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2014) and What the Things Sang (Shearsman, 2012) as well as several chapbooks of poetry and articles on Early Modern English lexis. Born in 1964, he lives in London and works in Oxford.
Alistair Noon is the author of Earth Records (2012) and The Kerosene Singing (2015), both from Nine Arches Press, as well as a dozen chapbooks of poetry and translations from German and Russian. Born in 1970, he lives in Berlin, where he works as a translator.
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