Dead Papa Toothwort wakes from his standing nap an acre wide and scrapes off dream dregs of bitumen glistening thick with liquid globs of litter. He lies down to hear hymns of the earth (there are none,
so he hums), then he shrinks, cuts himself a mouth with a rusted ring pull and sucks up a wet skin of acid-rich mulch and fruity detritivores. He splits and wobbles, divides and reassembles, coughs up a plastic pot and a petrified condom, briefly pauses as a smashed fibreglass bath, stumbles and rips off the mask, feels his face and finds it made of long-buried tannic acid bottles. Victorian rubbish.

Tetchy Papa Toothwort should never sleep in the afternoon; he doesn’t know who he is.

He wants to kill things, so he sings. It sounds slow-nothing like tarmac bubbles popping in a heatwave. His grin takes a sticky hour. Cheering up, he chatters in the voice of a cultured fool to the dry papery wings and under-bark underlings, to the marks he left here last year, to the mice and larks, voles and deer, to the quaint memory of himself as cyclically reliable, as part of the country curriculum. He slips through one grim costume after another as he rustles and trickles and cusses his way between trees. He walks a few paces as an engineer in a Day-Glo vest. He takes a step in a dinner suit, then an Anderson shelter, then a tracksuit, then a rusted jeep bonnet, then a leather skirt, but nothing works. He pauses as an exhaust pipe, then squirms into the shape of a rabbit snare, then a pissed-on nettle into pink-strangled lamb. He plucks a blackbird from the sky and cracks open the yellow beak. He peers into the ripped face as if it were a clean pond. He flings the bird across the forest stage, stands up woodlot bare, bushy, and stamps his spalted feet. His body is a suit of bark-armour with the initials of long-dead teenage lovers carved in thesurface. He clomps through the wood, wide awake and hungry for his listening.

Only one thing can cheer up crotchety Toothwort and that’s his listening.

He slides across the land at precisely the speed of dusk and arrives at his favourite spot. The village sits up pretty to greet him, sponged in half-light. He climbs into the kissing gate. He is invisible and patient and about the size of a flea. He sits still.
He listens. Here it is.

Human sound, tethered to his interest, dragged across the field, sucked into his great need.

Gorgeous.

A lovely time of day.

Now it is around him, he reaches in and delicately pulls out threads, a conductor coaxing sound out of an orchestra,

planting stock
bin it then

expertly, unhurried, like time slowly acting death upon an organism, little by little, listening. He hears his village turning itself over towards its bedtime,

piss off Alan
clean forgot milk
talking to old Peggy
every last mouthful, ee

autumn’s a brutal surgeon,

Dead Papa Toothwort exhales, relaxes, lolls inside the stile, smiles and drinks it in, his English symphony,

rooks quacking, laminate the rota,
quick kick-about,

Agnetta’s piled on the pounds,
o
a sign up at Elm House,
satsuma p e e l down the street like
littleshit,
interesting light,

Special Delivery and Signed For are not the same thing,
horrid parents,
choir clashes with Benders sadly,
last glass then bed,    blocked drains,
a
Iranian or something,
coming in    and out    like the wind,

Sheila’s salted caramel rice pudding sweet Jesus I died nine 

he swims in it, he gobbles it up and wraps himself in it, he rubs it all over himself, he pushes it into his holes, he gargles, plays, punctuates and grazes, licks and slurps at the sound of it, wanting it fizzing on his tongue, this place of his,

the gate worn where she’s leant on it seventy summers, like sexed-up foxes,    he’s a bum-bandit,
state of the toilets, fibre-optic, put our foot down,
fewer antibiotics healthier cows,
endless moaning,
sinister old wackjob, state of that scooter,    naff as shit tat, Linda Liability,
a
,    you or me,

more ironing then a cuppa,

begging for a lift on Friday,

little word to the wise Ken,

unite,    PlayStation’s bust,
Dave has bucketloads of dahlias

Dead Papa Toothwort chews the noise of the place and waits for his favourite taste, but he hasn’t got to it yet,

I was a schoolteacher so I know all about bumped heads,

whatsup dapper two-chins,

uprooting a load of bluebells for two days of prettiness,
Fat Pam on a scone and jam rampage,
told him buggered clutch, change channels, useful compost,    text him back,
Roy’s had another attack, Yashvi co
affair enough look at his missus, over my
I saw the carers going in but Jean said they were past that point,
sturdy jasmine,
twenty press-ups and a five-knuckle shufle,
hark at me planning a month ahead,
jugs of run-off,

bang out of order, pay-as-you-go, simply unwelcome, brings up toxic masculinity every single book club, El gaz pissed

and then he hears it, clear and true, the lovely sound of his favourite.
The boy.

It would have the head of a dolphin and the wings of a peregrine, and it would be a storm-warning beast, watching the weather while we sleep.

Dead Papa Toothwort hugs himself with diseased larch arms and dribbles cuckoo spit down his chin. He grins. The head of a dolphin and the wings of a peregrine! Surgical yearnings invade him, he wants to chop the village open and pull the child out.

Extract him.

Young and ancient all at once, a mirror and a key. A storm-warning beast, watching the weather … He listens to the boy for a while, his bedtime thoughts, his goodnight words to his mother, his waking mind trickling into visionary sleep. Then Dead Papa Toothwort leaves his spot and wanders off, chuckling, jangling in his various skins, wearing a tarpaulin gloaming coat, drunk on the village, ripe with feeling, tingling with thoughts of how one thing leads to another again and again, time and again, with no such thing as an ending.