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
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
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