Lap

by Nina Quigley

I’m a stranger, peddling through the saucer

of a world I barely know nor understand,

a sunken pudding of fields and drainage channels

with shy, low hills on the outer rim.

It feels like a Sunday. The day belongs

to bouncing birds, and sweating, solitary men

tweaking at hedges and cars. I get wafts

of honeysuckle and new-cut grass with warm,

dark undertones of piss and shit, and pass

a mess of crows plundering a scarred field,

razored raw. I’m at the top of the world almost,

a far north where it’s winter in July,

though butterflies and wildflowers are brave

and build their home in the lap of improbable summer.