What it means

Seventeen years a boy

Seventeen years and a kiss
what it means—

Seventeen years then a man
what it means—

Abstruse meaning
What does it mean?

Music channeling the Outside
Children playing among the crowd

Flushed face—head on a pillow
The need to cry: what it means!

A large silver birch and fly agaric
Munched by a black sheep
All nestled in a short quarry
Hillside hollow beside moorland clough
Warland—

what it means—

The feeling of a place
Pockmarked outcrop
Pylons cutting
Turbines spinning

She whispers what it means—

You imagine yourself standing atop Studley Pike
Staring across at the barrow
Sun shining, through wind swept cloud
Arms outstretched and crucified

What does it look like?

At the Whirlaw Stones—

Indecipherable muttering haunts what could be

Now and then I feel
Now and then I cry

You cry out
In and out of focus
A blur, ablur

To be held
To hold
To touch

Insides squeezed and pumped
Squeezed and pumped
Squeezed and pumped

Squeezed and pumped is exactly what she means

So you stand in the crowd
Alone pieced together
You know exactly what it means.