Leg Glance

The dangers of the subjunctive mood
when love affairs are still all coal and smoke

and gestures focus on almost stationary details,
a thistle, the moon, an unexpected thrush

In the basic architecture of cricket (apart
from its medieval tone) is the almost sultry
skill of the leg glance that involves
“a very short parlay with the head,”
as Ranjitsinhji said, misquoting Jane Austen

and not bothering to move
from the path of the dangerous ball

It is how you make a song
out of someone else’s rumour
far beyond the boundary

having reached for what is remote,
covert during a tender alliance
like hidden stairs down into a pond

Almost sinless, with no moral or latitude
as at the outskirts of a particular kind of writing