THE HEAVEN OF LOST FUTURES

after Derek Mahon

 

The town arcade is teatime dark.

Along its kerb, dead leaves

wind whipped, are swept to mush.

Naked branches thicken with light –

a star shell burst.

Then another and another.

 

Does falling debris understand

where it may safely land?

The path it follows is least time

least energy,

cares not how fragile shelter is.

Nor how long you’ve glared

 

at shop windows – cursing  

under your breath – their endless choice.

But no blank slate for sale.

The person you wanted to be

is somewhere else,

translating whispers into peace.

 

 xii. 2023

A BIRD IN THE HAND

 

Were we to meet again, we might recall that day.

Approach it as we did back then,

on abandoned track: the sleepers long gone

but old ballast lending traction

to our pram wheels – ramshackle, loaded down.

 

Nets and bags, rings and pliers, spring balance,

wing rule, leg gauge.

Ten-foot bamboo poles with guys and pegs to fix them.

Tranquil in the high summer dawn,

reed beds finger chill, pongy with marsh gas.

 

Cloud and damp burned off by the risen sun,

we’d reached the point of humdrum packing up

when that chance capture came.

Stubby legs between white knuckles – I held them tight

while you focussed your lenses.

 

No photo could match that feathered shimmering though,

tense with anticipation of release.

Like arrow from a bow,

a flash of electric blue on orange

fixed our halcyon fellowship.

 

The day we caught a kingfisher.

 

iii. 2019 – xi. 2023

WATCH AND WAIT

A kestrel quarters the allotment, sees

where the eye may take him.

I too find my bearings

in a wild silence of flood plain,

beyond the hum of land management.

Only the draught through branches 

for company. Its fitful swell

and waning at the disguised boundary:

always there must be lawns to mow,

concrete to lay, fences to erect

and guard. A possessed realm.

Even on this dreich day, when time goes back,

it should not be so quiet.

We only know what can be heard:

in sodden woods, where few birds call,

the scrunch of acorns trampled

softly underfoot. A rotten world

until the clocks advance once more.

 

 xi. 2023