The two spaniels leaping and flying
like shadow and leaper, like leaper and shadow
sent in wider and wider circles,
the more they leap about, and chase
each other through the mile-wide depths of choppy kale,
the more they might be mistaken for
an upblown leaf, a lifted edge that balances
its catchment of light briefly like their coats
parting to the skin in the wind=s combs
which cross the heath like a search-party, extending
the eerie coastline of the prison fence.
The logic of them, flopping and collapsing, flies
out in a northerly direction towards the last outcrops
of Scapa Flow, or keeps going with the rafts
of overushing altocumulus due west
to the land floes of Inishbofin, east to Orford Ness
or south to the lip of the Lizard, where it hovers panting
over the odd ellipsis of Land's End;
this before it takes the whole flight on rewind,
tracing it phase by phase until the dogs
refind the channel they have trodden flat
in the blowing field where the kale
springs up again in front of them, untrampled.
The logic of their leaping takes
the flight again, and then again, as if each flight
is the exercise without which its belly
would drag too close to the ground,
and those tresses in earthbound flight become
a slip-leash, a sort of flowing yoke built around
the features of a little prune face
and mouthful of yappy snarls.