It’s National Poetry Day, for once it’s the actual day for this country so I’m not just using another nation’s day as an excuse. I wasn’t intending to write a poem, but this almost came out spontaneously as a response to an email, so I thought I’d better scrub it, put it here and reply more sensibly. I’m not saying this is the definitive guide to child-rearing, incidentally. Just a facet of how I see it.
Tag Archives: poetry
A Moment in a Riot
On Walthamstow Marsh
London breathes in
Brackish pools
Yellowed-straw grass
Swathed and rippling
In flattened heat.
Light work
Snarling, savage
Scream and leap on your desk
Thrash blindly at the cord
To the mouse that keeps you
Tethered,
Bought, brought close,
A wild thing
Dolled in toil.
Continue reading Light work
Twelfth Night
I miss
the pine smell
on the edge of sense
in the dark mornings, stumbling
to catch the plug stuffed behind the bulk
of a tree
whose fate it was to stand
mute in gaiety
in our living room.
Of this fate
it did not know.
It is a tree, and it knows little
but the endless grip of roots in the soil
and the catch
of endless winds through evergreen,
whistling
knife-cut needles.
Blip
Another ambulance
Off to save
Another life
Eye Level
We are crawling over rooftops
Sliding around aircon cans
Flightless beasts.
We drift with the low cloud
Skimming fingertips across gravelled roofs
Eyes fixed on the floor.
We are the thunderstorm, brewed
And stewed like tea
Too strong in a pot.
We are crickets, buzzing chirping
Singing in the grass
Of quiet greens.
We are floodwaters burst
Snowmelt swamping, stomping
Waves through streets.
Bacon.
Thanks to @NathanHuman and @Orbette
Notes,
studied on the refrigerator door.
The cold hum,
drowned
by breakfast’s gleeful crackle.
Continue reading Bacon.