Avoiding the question

 

You ask what’s in this place we chose

which keeps us here, to close our days.

I cannot answer that for last year’s blooms remain

to be deadheaded.

                                  Their dry and brittle seedpods

clipped and swept aside, like so much futile beauty.

 

Rather, I would be a grebe. Lose my hobbled gait,

float on some still clear broad.

                                                        Stay low.

Dive to the bottom where even now light reaches.

While held breath holds, lobed toes propel

my dagger bill, emerging elsewhere faraway.

 

And long ago on disused track, its sleepers gone,

a skinny boy quickens to the cross-country tape.

Muddy pumps scrunch on old ballast

past the sewage farm.

                                         Not yet overwhelmed

by heavier rain, cracked pipes, and more of us.

  

iii. 2026
 

Between sleeping & waking

Putting the window back in place

 

Month after month our view is boarded up,

a grotto; we persist in shadows

lit by just electric glare.

Know that outside, unreported

a garden full of fallen leaves is there.

 

Beside his heavy gloves, my friend lays out

the chosen tools: chisel, spud wrench

pliers, plum bob, spirit level

headtorch, hammers (both lump and claw).

And more. Daring me to say what’s missing.

 

We plan our movements, where to plant our feet.

How we’ll take the weight, sidestep torque

on hinges. Then minding corners feel

for the flush of an easy close.

Fix a quadrant stay to set the opening.

 

Watch daylight flood the room at last.

ii. 2026

The Judas Tree

 

Tucked between my opened pages,

a redbud leaf. Crisp as a poppadom, disc-flat

like an ancient map of the earth.

 

What park or garden it came from

I could not tell; nor whether it was plucked or fell.

All that is unremembered now.

 

Held in the gaze of my mind’s eye

gently spreading boughs, like undrawn sidearms, weep

pink blooms direct from dark gouged bark.

 

Its need for water slight, new life

springs from old wood, sap rising unseen year on year

making most of drought resistance.

 

When treachery stalks the streets

remorseless, this canopy is bold, defiant.

Shelter where all may hang their love.

 

i. 2026