DERELICT Haggard as November, he thirsts for the river. How fast it winds! – as though it were cleaning a secret wound on the hip of the land. And under the night’s untenanted sky, he listens to the loosened – to the wind-without-code on the birdless tree, to the plummeting leaf, with its brief goodbye. And he listens.  And he listens to the chastened, the blanched. Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON