You were telling us about the way
that peat is layered.
How time percolates through its pores,
making each moment
a downward journey, each instant
a new skin stretching itself towards
the next.

A lizard has unbound its tongue,
snaps the air,
leaps two hundred million years,
clears the last few feet – just,
and finds us here, blocking the sun.

You were telling us about the way
that landscapes shift.
How stories unfold in the creases,
making slow-flowing rivers stretch, contort,
and stretch again.

A little egret winks,
stretches one long lazy wing,
shuffles back into itself
then snaps.
And the dragonfly tastes like
carboniferous DNA,
slow-roasted by the sun over three hundred
million years.

Now you’re showing us the way
to walk back home,
how to feel our feet sinking in dew-damp peat,
and to stand amongst the other kinds,
sensing our way.

A worm has awoken, sensing rain,
burrows up through layers,
stretches its skin more than
five hundred million years,
to find us here, casting shadows
from the still-burning sun.