Caroline Bird

Badger watching wasn’t my first choice,
or my second either, but here we are, face down
like playing cards on the brink of a hill.
Stars and molehills, waiting for the badgers.

We’d painted our faces, unravelled
down the lane before the cold could track us down.
But now, now that your voice is seeping into my pores
and the badgers have stood us up, left us at the altar

with a tuft of grass and a tree, it’s tempting,
tempting to tilt sideways and leave you behind,
roll hips first down badger mountain
into the blue green belly of the lake.

After two hours we will leave, avoiding the path
because we prefer to trip up, but pretending,
behind our foreheads, that we could have seen badgers.
Maybe, if we’d enticed them out with sausages.