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Meeting on a summer evening by Zoe Brooks

Between garden and suburban skip
upon the grey-lichened fence 
a stag beetle in elegant pose,
brown and green
in his Black Prince armour.
Shocked by the size of him, 
we stopped to watch
as the antlered knight
in predatory stance
swept the air about his head,
as soldiers cut sandbags
to remove the guts of enemies
hidden there.
Meanwhile slowly
beneath our notice
blacker and larger
than her mate
another climbed the nearby tree.

---

Zoe Brooks' first collection Owl Unbound will be published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2020. She has been published by many magazines, including Dreamcatcher, Prole, Obsessed With Pipework, Fenland Reed, and The Rialto. Her long poem Fool's Paradise received the EPIC award for best poetry ebook 2013. Zoe is from Gloucestershire and helps the Cheltenham Poetry Festival with community development, having previously worked with deprived communities in London and Oxford. 

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