The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Paul Stevens

STONEHENGE


The wind flowed cold as a glacier across Salisbury Plain
As we circled the circling circles of stone upon stone,
Where the antic lines of earth channeled and gathered
To relay energy free down the sacred avenue—
But sliced now, disconnected by fence and motorway,
Dispersed by the pulse of helicopter rotors beating,
Bruising our sky, tin insects supervising,
Bristling, twitching over the land of fear.
This patterned placement once engaged the bare plain
With heaven, and looped power to the cosmos beyond,
Grafting us whole to the numinous constellations.
Now the wind washes across us, relentlessly cold,