Listing to Port

Lumpy shadows, cats that have three eyes and all of them a different colour, great grey stones half-seen through the rain, serpents who have lost their hearts and will take any replacement, old woodlice, naked squirrels with long white fingers, round pebbles that take a single breath a day, orphaned songs, frostbitten swifts, things that sit in hollow logs cracking sticks, blackbirds with one white wing, the spirits of stagnant ponds, bottle imps, the lonely bees of the last light of day, those who have forgotten everything other than carving clocks, toads with a stone in their head, things that are raised from the mud, lantern-bearers, lavender-weavers, ticking whisperers, cold and lonely moles, evaporating ghosts, genial hosts who have taken off their masks, holes that skitter over the faces of trees, the holders of keys, bitter architects, lost horses from centuries past, wrong paths, the white hart turned red, charcoal-singers, stag-headed bonebags, gentlewomen all of sticks, counterwise-shades, those things that are inside-out and have no wish to be, caterwaulers, veiled chalkmen.