There, framed as I drive by to shop,
the birches, the beeches, all black silhouettes,
claim the water-colour after-sunset sky,
streaky of red and blue and blue-steel grey.
Wheeling in this theatre, a small flock
of starlings, as if imprisoned in a screen
vision lost at traffic lights. A dim man
pulling a wheeled duffle bag -
something, a stroke, a subnormality,
a godawful-life took it out of him,
the way he shuffles across, beckoned
on frantically by minders, all younger than I.
I almost want to cry but I tell Ursula.
It is so dark at five. Then later on
walking the wet, broken paving
crazed more by hedge-shadows
this warm December evening out.
I don't know what it is that maddens.
I am deluged with the momentary
in this easy locality. I can't sit in my skin
tonight, Dadda, on your birthday.
YOU ARE READING
Winter Trails
PoetryWinter Trails is an album of my poems, journeying through late fall when the wire of the trees begins to dominate, till the end of January. After promoting it and it soaring to three quarter million reads, Wattpad unceremoniously dumped it. Here it...
