A KEEPER OF KEYS

You said I was getting just like your Dad.

By the time he died his pockets bulged,

were weighed down with them;

you could hear their jangle, all shapes and sizes.

No wonder he needed a belt.

None - as far as you knew - fitted anywhere.

But, I countered, they could have.

In the teeth of every blade an answer

to the unsolved puzzle of a lock.

Each might reveal some secret,

if we only guessed where its keyway was.

Try one, have a go.

Between thumb and crooked finger

take the bow, apply some torque and turn its shaft.

Listen for pins tumbling to their shear line,

and imagine.

The view from a sash window,

a tune from a musical box,

the petty rattle of a cash tin.

A sewing-machine’s whirr,

escape on an unchained bike,

a sandwich in a briefcase.

The whiff of grass cuttings in a shed,

the privacy of a drawer,

keepsakes in a treasure chest.

I’d carry on about the openings,

the untold stories behind front doors,

but you’re not persuaded, I can tell.

Simply scrap metal, you argue,

not even worth recycling.

Whatever. This collection stays -

you never know when one may fit.

Along with the redundant foreign coins

I’ll leave you them in my will,

an array of question marks.

viii.2009

STATIONARY

Brisk suits bundle in through the gates:

late and sweaty, armed

with Mail and Times and reaction.

Above them solemn hands clockwise turn;

while digital seconds drop,

counted click by dull click

into a charity rattle of small coin.

Rebounding home from night,

I join a shuffle of summer sneakers,

and the clack of well-heeled shopping expeditions:

our outward mood more leisured.

Signalling offhand delay

a wait of cigarette smoke curls upward,

suffuses shafts of day.

Over tin rhythms of walkmen,

ritual apologies are misheard:

those tannoyed yawn terminal unsurprise.

Some ring-pull’s fizzy snap shares my platform

with the strain of mobile phone tones;

unknown connections made,

where rails narrow to a distant asymptote.

Why not take a single?

Return as someone else.

ii.2001

CAPE COD POSTCARDS

I.

Prim ballerinas quickstep,

probe the surf’s margin:

each split-second flicking

white and black, edge to centre,

wing to tail, back and forth.

Every pulse of tide

sifted for sustenance.

II.

Squatting in the backwash,

desultory, I dig

while feet bury themselves.

Through the sieve of my hands

damp demerara spills;

grains of truth trickle down,

lost in the sweep of beach.

III.

A horseshoe carapace

and tail-spine packed

carefully in tissue paper:

eviscerated flotsam

of mass nocturnal mating.

My dried souvenir

saw danger only from above.

ii. 2001

ENGAGED TONE

 

Following in the wake of bride and groom,

we sit: unrelated passengers

who watch the dancing guests.

Fiddle and guitar, polka, jig –

a young Pole shyly smiles,

and I am envious of his joy,

yet sad at his watershed, his exile.

 

Ours is an embrace on thin ice,

and I wonder at your brim of confidence,

the undeserved trust.

Your head presses tight to my chest,

a warm neck resting in the crook of arm:

so love is a secret cache,

glasses a shield of discretion.

 

1987

Poetry Salzburg Review #9, 2006