PLATFORM

Under security mirror

and manifesto of adverts,

we who wait, watched over.

Beneath the fish-eye stare

I pace an edge’s yellow warning,

taste dampness in September’s air,

and scan the choice of company.

Youth adjusts its midriff,

selects new tracks to pass midday

content in isolation.

Down parallels of to-and-from

I look to gauge direction;

for unloosed words to run

true as that line below bridges:

each arch seen through a nearer one.

The boundaries, brick and wooded,

narrow to distant amber:

our signal undecided.

My train is overdue.

A crisp bag crackles, and silent

the first leaf falls, no end in view.

ix.2005

Pushing Out The Boat #11, 2012

PUTTING THE CLOCK BACK

September.
Persephone jumps pre-emptive
back to the underworld;
is buried in the fall that follows -
concrete and kerosene.

Hunched into morning,
mist rolls in; hangs
like dust down avenues.
Beneath old chestnuts, conkers -
littered as cluster bombs and aid parcels -
are collected by children.
Choice of shape is vital:
both food and death are yellow.

Night overtakes day.
In gutters, leaves swept to mush
pile up, refugees along the kerb.
Wind-whipped, their colours wear thin
and the year is brought to earth.

Eleventh hour poppies bloom in lapels,
bedeck memorials -
a harvest fit for junkies.
Held in this balance of terror  
our human form divine.

 

xi. 2001

FOR THE RECORD

In yawns of dawn departure loaded,
yet left behind, the camera;
not for the first time we’re reduced
to postcard reminiscences.
Look right there, in the glove box crushed,
a former plastic canister
spills its sprung brown roll, glossy
with pictures taken yet concealed.

Scenes not seen, forever frozen
in the pause before a red light shows,
get held in fleeting recollection.
That moment when I squeezed your hand,
kissed your cheek and cracked a feeble joke:
because we stood and gazed beyond
the margin’s frame of reference,
I know by heart its landscape.

Sundown across waves, a cliché
slips behind the lid of nightfall.
Looming large at distance, but
in a snapshot’s fixed alignment,
close up the green-washed glitter
is never so sublime; remember
we leave someday as we came in –
take only what’s disposable.

ix.2009