February And Beyond

Examination & Others

In an Aldi Car Park

A mild, soft-drizzled
dusk of this day, forgetting
its own business,
speeding steps a little,
since damp gnaws at aching back
and fills the lungs
with dragging sighs.

Still the gentle rhythm of the rain consoles,
looking out from shelter
where corrugated
glass spreads the adjacent light
into a beaded arc, virtual overhead.

Under the shimmer,
concatenating occasions,
something of me remembers deep
this common, plashed scene,
set spinning from frailty's
rain-flecked  baseline
to catch and hold
a smile within.

...........................

Loneliness

Almost a vertigo,
so remote,
pinnacle observing
recurrence relations
way below
in situ,
being a tutor,
being a driver,
home alone.

Regress,
poised mid slivers,
parallel mirrors,
tiny alien
homunculus
peering  from The Gods
in Cartesian theatre.

Yet where did this patience spring?
Such resilience
an empty boat
righting after knocks,
drifting  away inconvenience;

and the balloon tube -
blowing up, yes
but then letting go too,
all over the place,

sighing easy
as a distant calliope.

..............

Examination

Kind days continue
mild, damp, sometimes drizzly,
mornings intoning pigeon tomes;
then, from a few stray cracks of blue,
sky-eye opens, shockingly pellucid,
scans us in intimate detail.

I hide indoors, upstairs,
behind blinds and peer.

Sun finds the dishevelled, the unmade,
the scratty backs of hedges and gardens
with grass half sparse, half lush in clumps,
silvering hedge tops with a shimmering duct
of mirrored leaves astir, as if light-splashes
roll from leaf to leaf.

Chiaroscuro illumination -
trees standing still for examination,
every twig a line of light and dark -
and what are trees hiding behind their backs?

'What was that, Wheelbarrow?
Yes you, with the dead weed-stems
and the tiny, flat, bright-green seedlings.
Will you share it with us? I am sure
we would all benefit from your peaty humour!'

...