Tollund Woman

[Ros]

Six am: seclusion folds around me,
a winding-sheet, birds of memory trapped
and flapping inside my skin. I dance
to Nerthus, revel in the rot of ergot.
The grass runs, dribbles down my arms,
weaves greenness into baskets.
I empty beechnuts into them,
sharp cornered caltrops, antiphons
to unanswered questions.

Silent, I drink more tea; brown, green,
keen to preserve myself, acid
as bog bodies. I lie in peat, eat soup
of bristlegrass and gold of pleasure,
tie a hide belt around my waist,
a garrotte around my neck. My head
tips back, detached. I fill with water,
thumb print stained upon the sky.