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A
Soldiers Time of Day
The morning
has not busied.
Shops, pubs
& cafés are still
wrapped
in sleep
behind shutters.
A blind vet strolls
the sidewalk
with white cane
snug to armpit.
As yet, no tables
or chairs to avoid
or sandwich boards
or window cleaners'
ladders, no sleeping
dogs, beer kegs
or crates of flagons.
He's back in charge.
A Sergeant Major
once again.
In timely step
once a day
before reveille.
***
After Breakfast
Well skip the bud
that frees us from
our phobia, boot it
for a day. First step
will be a giant's -
to cross a belching
road without
choking.
Then we'll skip
over the wall.
Our feet first
to feel the luxury.
We'll sink into sand
that's not mixed
three to one
and set, unlike
the path we skip
from.
And as sure as we'll have
fish 'n'
chips later, there'll
be a dog retrieving a ball
over and over
again, never tiring.
The sea will froth
at the hem
and further off
a dredger will be stuck
in the middle of morning.
And we'll stare and stare
at the openness,
our
backs turned on
the city's bane.
***
Women Only
And further more:
you didn't fool
a frog
when you
jumped
headlong onto
the dyke
pretending to be
a shield.
The use of
surprise
to disguise
your intentions
was a ham's
performance.
Even she
though she
played along
wasn't fooled.
***
Taming
My View
I thought my wild
window scene
would have lasted
out my years
but they have scythed
the blackberry bushes
And
while the fruit
was young
like knots.
Rabbits have retreated
well back in the heath
so painfully far
my eyes
can't play on them.
Foundations
of a concrete new era:
high-rise cell blocks
car-parks
for drug dealers.
Sun scorched Irish
Navvies with vicious
eyes and fierce tongues
tame my view.
***
Separation
Old times with him
in youth she can't
renew, what then
what seems
millenniums ago
they shared
what they
in adolescence
knew: a culture
in their veins
its ebb and flow.
The size of faith, its
clarity now blurred
she yearns to see
to hear her mother's
way, on native soil
to screech
the fathers' word
to pilgrims
waved on
from her sandbur
bay. Seeds
that will never lose
their pride of place
nor will the
tree
among strange trees
forget its
origin, its
sister root, its
brace.
Where will you nest
in winter, sweet
linnet? Maybe
in the fork
of some cousin-
branch
on some bigoted
brother's blasé-
bogged ranch.
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Dumped As I Slept
An opportunist fly
tipper needed only
the cover of night.
My first gaze
through the window
locks onto the open
gate which doesn't
swing in the wind
because the armchair
with two bottles
of silver top
sat comfy on it
prevents movement.
The postman scissors
the wall. A signature
is requisite.
***
Midday Barrage
His river's
sleek flow
through morning
veers
into a maelstrom.
A rapacious
afternoon
around the
bend scuppers
his sails,
barricades
the gateway
to his mind,
sinks a hoy
of ideas.
His muses
utterly shuttered
and firmly
battened
he latches
onto
a solitary
salvaged thought:
better the
measure
be short of the brim
than sop the literates'
laps with stagnant
overspill.
***
Mixing With Aliens
Temulent
winebibbers jiffle
among shoppers
along the High-
Street.
Going nowhere
they U-turn
before the throng
filters
to a dribble,
not wanting to be kenspeckle
to street-cleaning cops.
The sots
are deadpan,
behind which,
one can't help
but think
there's an
autobiography
that cries
for elaqueate.
A would-be
bestseller,
a mixture
of rhathymia
and woebegoness,
but we only
get to see
the wrap.
Back home,
huddled under
arches alongside the canal,
they gongoozle;
talk little
of their
day out:
the smell
of fresh clothes,
buzz of
aliens.
***
Dawn
She sits
up, hauls herself over
slumbering
hills, wells across
the heath's
dew-juiced heather,
rolls
the tail of the pupil-
black
night, marks time
with the
beaching tide,
soundless
as an ukulele
in a shop
window.
***
One of Them
He digs with a
nib
in the dark like an aardvark,
hauls his findings
to a high hill,
frees them
into first light;
lets them
roll down onto unexpected heads.
Sore and sour,
they search
for him to gag the truth
by batter or by
bribe,
but he's hidden
behind
a pseudonym that floats
and leaves no trail.
Far from done he
has an eye
for more and bigger
mackerel.
He'd like to say,
I wrote the facts
and set
the trapsthat sent them
to their cells,
but he foregoes
the credit due
so he can watch
close up, the ooze
from his colleagues'
pores.
***
Fifty Years On
You had played
there before
the houses had been capped
and windowed, when trowels
clattered, and
barrows
clanked along planks.
Shouts from busybodies
on scaffolds: pass the ball
you selfish bastard,
go on
my son, shoot,
shoot.
And you'd run your
pants off
without panting.
Spectator now,
you watch
your same school
colours,
black & amber
running through
reds. Another goal!
Another punch in the air.
Three up, the ref
blows time.
You're content
to watch
the pitch invasion,
the chimneys smoking,
the black pup leashed
to the white gate
yelping
as you suck from
your asthma pump.
***
Keeping
up Appearances
He'll glide through
six days
of
it, today. One day in seven
he
manages it. When she turns up
she'll
do the same
as every week:
look at him
framed on the mantelpiece;
in
airforce blue.
Just look at you,
then.
And he'll jut his chin
from the
armchair.
Look at me, now.
But she'll not notice
the
cutthroat's craft,
its dip on the
upper lip,
its
slip down the cheek
and
curve around the chin.
She'll just pick up
his
pension book and a list
for the grocer.
***
Hysteria
in a Rose Garden
He is hung on his
wail,
tongue tight as
an acorn,
stretched like
the string
of a kite. His mouth
at full throttle
brims
to a hush, the air too
thick,
too sweet to swallow.
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