Shroud

By R. M. Francis

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We were saved but lost –
the novel and known,
the quick-closed and the slow-open – 
and with nowhere to belong, 

but to follow fire and cloud. 

Imagine the pain of Newton’s
graceful unblinding.
Through level and all levels,
gestalt down to the parts.

All things built and building 
through friction and flow -
we had to learn to unknow.
Corpus Callosum: a rich wooden staff
puncturing surf into crossing point –  
to put down a stone
and reveal a spiral stepping.

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R. M. Francis is Senior Lecturer and Course Leader in Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Wolverhampton. He's the author of two novels, Bella and The Wrenna, published with Wild Pressed Books, and a poetry collection, Subsidence, with Smokestack Books. In 2019 he was the inaugural David Bradshaw Writer in Residence at the University of Oxford and in 2020 was Poet in Residence for The Black Country Geological Society. In 2023 Poe Girl Publishing produced his collection of horror stories, Ameles / Currents of Unmindfulness. His academic research focuses on place-identity in the Black Country and has been published in a number of edited collections; he co-edited the book, Smell, Memory and Literature in the Black Country (Palgrave McMillan) with Professor Sebastian Groes.

Francis' other work on Foreshadow:
Man of Sorrows (Poetry, October 2024)
Prayerfully (Poetry, October 2024)
Anthony (Poetry, November 2024)