Each hammer, each pull of the sally echoes
resonant air-sparks cutting through silence,
the slow-turning peal of bells across fields,

and a broad span of air, slicing the silence
of a sleepy Sunday, a psalm of glory, praising
the mist, the running hare, the waving nettles

in spiralling ripples from the clapper striking
the soundbow, the skirt amplifying reverberations,
resonance held by the yoke, headstock, canon.

From the lowest tenor to the highest treble,
from the coded blue lines, the heaving, sweaty
band in concentrated circle gathers unseen,

performing Plain Bob, Stedman or London Surprise
to the audience they never see. You may see them leave,
with quiet nods, job done, a communion in sound. 

---

Ben Bruges works in education, is Features Editor for Hastings Independent Press and has poems published in Interpreter’s House, Banyan Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, London Grip, Macrame Literary Journal, Write Under the Moon, Memoirist, Howling Owl, Radical Catalyst Journal, ‘special consideration’ for The Wee Sparrow Press’ ekphrastic competition, Creaking Kettle & Elizabeth Royal Patton Memorial Poetry Competition anthologies and forthcoming in Fragmented Voices magazine. He is a member of Hastings Stanza Group. Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate complimented the poems “for their density, thoughtfulness and cleverly pausing rhythms. [They] manage to make the urban city-scape resonate like a pastoral one.”