Three Poems

You'll know me by the broken wing

in my brain, the snapped swallow synapse,

the wrenched wrist bone on its torsion axis;

by the blue and the white of its coverts

and alulas as they stroke and scalpel

my head with secondaries and scattered down;

by the pent and twist of my energy flying

from one hemisphere to the other as I crook

your fingers and turn your milk to blood.

Beyond the pale of trees

and littered undergrowth,

there it is again, our moon;

full between bare branches,

it scuds near rooftop level

above a semi's chimney pots.

Full, or faintly on the wane,

seen suddenly, it takes a mind

off the day's absurdities …

Although we know about it now,

have been there, done that, still

intact it throws some light

on this route back home

disturbing dulled, automaton

limits with its milky glow

so unbereft of mysteries

for no, not gone, they're there

at the edges of attention.

Dazzlingly cloudless day,

grassed spaces all a whiteness

as this ghosting ground-mist

mystifies the frosted lake,

duck skaters on their element

sense ice weaken, crack,

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letting them take to it again

when they get their water back.

Meanwhile, sun had gone on trying

as cloud-shapes made their way

across the slatted window panes

like melted music on a stave

past sheds, rust-eaten at their edges,

died-back plantings, other signs

of stubbornly rampant ivy hedges

criss-crossed by washing lines …

until a moon, egg-sliced by blinds,

rises in sky's deeper blue,

reminds you, smudged by further cloud,

of a broken night's sleep now;

and though there's no end of the world,

given all that's said or done

beyond your illness horizon,

it was as if nothing had happened.

Most times, I'm like a multi-storey car park

where we can't find the car.

Overcrowded or deserted, in an oil-stained half-dark,

I go from floor to floor.

But today, through a long spring evening,

transparent shadow's equally spread

over this back-street brick and sandstone;

re-foliate flora cresting the hill,

two people are training their spaniel

to ‘Walk on!’ ‘Sit!’ and ‘Heel!’

as they each drop into a Polling Station.

Two lovers pause to kiss. Illuminated,

a gardener stoops among her flowers

when all a life's conflated

into that view of brief duration …

It's as if I could see me now.

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