Poem

Saturday. The usual 9 a.m. flight.
The man beside me hefts a Gladstone.
‘I haven’t seen one of those in years,’
I say, this being sociable Saturday.
I recall a worn one from my twenties
owned by someone else. Always empty

A doctor with a face

worn and grey as his cardigan

calls my name

in his rooms

he asks about the book I’m reading

I tell him

So much activity outside
where sunlight spills across the snow
like cream –

      Rain bubble-wrapping the windows. Rain
falling as though someone ran a blade down the spines
   of fish setting those tiny backbones free. Rain
            with its squinting glance, rain

And the world is fire.

And the sky wears a smoky veil.

And the bloodshot sun stares.

    ‘Addio, valle di pianti’ –

    These the composer’s plainchant words

    No librettist dare rewrite

    At using up imprisoned air

    To sing like miners’ warning birds

    Inside the sunless atmosphere

    Of Eros and eternal night,

    Amneris concertante.

the gardens dyed silver. finally he was

less keen like an eaten bird, it wasnt my thing

the path diverged off course to a camp.

you were willing to grow a pomegranate inside.

here they were gods people with their quiet domestics,

the redheads were nicer however. the pram, was full with a baby,

‘dreaming’ of white museums. & white art.

Freefall
must be like this,

Not since I was four or five at most
and in the first of many striped tee-shirts
have I been this close to the flavour of safety.
I’m walking into town again, the child of hills.
You bought me fish and chips for lunch, my own
adult portion because I asked for it, in Evans’s
tiled restaurant, the Alhambra of takeaways.