Ice Breaker

The simple garden at the back of the house
with it’s playhouse standing in the corner
and the empty bird feeder swinging from the fence
faces dead north.

Which means, if I am correct, that the road
beneath this misted window travels east.
And if the morning weather report is to be believed,
then somewhere miles beyond the end of this street,

out over the rolling slate waves of an icy sea,
is gathering a sandstorm of snow.
A vast swarm of bees,
spiralling in on itself again and again.

A biblical plague of white flies which,
whilst you and I have been playing out the introductions,
has swept silently through this place,
like a deserted spectral train

that screams through an empty platform,
its tattered drapes flapping wildly
through a thousand glassless windows.

Fridayville

No matter where you are
such a place always seems too far away.
A small black dot on the far edge of the map

cut off by thick forests and rivers black.
But in this place the coffee is always fresh
the air coloured with the salty scent of bacon.

The children sit in their brightly coloured
classrooms listening to stories.
And in the afternoons they paint pictures of dragons

insects and far away lands.
The old ones walk in leafy parks.
They eat their neatly cut sandwiches

in the shade of the bandstand.
Then at dusk some gather around
tables of green felt to play some bridge and drink tea.

And by late evening the children curl into their beds
the parks are empty
and the cards neatly stacked in the bottom of the drawer.

Hibernaculum

I do not remember where I came across it.
The word just tripped me like a discarded slipper,
lying on a bedroom carpet in the darkness of 3am.

And now it will not go away.
Like the dog that follows me home each evening,
always just a few paces behind and then lies down on my lawn.

Hibernaculum, hibernaculum, hibernaculum.
I even say it in different accents; I change its tones and rhythms.
(it seems to sit well in American for some reason.)

I know what it means,
but I would prefer to think it was Roman.
A military outpost maybe, 50 miles north of Hadrian’s Wall.

Now a crumbling ruin on a hillside
that shelters a few grey sheep from the snowy gales.
In the middle of these long winter days,

I could easily be an animal
curled up in a dry hole somewhere
with my tail over my eyes.

How nice it would be to put on a few pounds for warmth,
climb in, and sleep out the cold until spring
as the tendrils of pale roots creep nearer.

But from there I would have missed you tonight.
I would not have been struck by the way the air around you shimmered.
How it sparkled every time you smiled.

Early Bird

I love that small silver thimble full of time
before the start of the day.
A little quiet time to get the job done
before all the work starts getting in the way.

It is just me, backed by a little music
played on a vacuum cleaner - full drone –
by another someone, somewhere
as the snakes hiss in the boiler by the door.

The empty halls hang on to last night’s forgotten things.
A letter home rests on the bookcase,
a list of spellings lie unlearned on the carpet
and the chewed stub of a pencil clings desperately
to a cold window sill.

And in this classroom stands a steaming cup of dark coffee,
it’s scent climbing into an air
that is as silent and still as an abandoned drum,
and loaded with the tension of a starting pistol.

A Bad Workman

This evening, surrounded by the darkness of the empty house,
the black nib of my pen points expectantly
at an empty space on the page.
A menacing spearhead of ink and insistency.
Just a phrase or even a well modified noun
and I’ll back off, it seems to say.
But it rests there as still as the judge’s gavel.
It brings to mind an image of a gundog
on dewy heath, standing straight and motionless,
pointing towards it’s far off quarry.

You may have realised that, these are not the lines
that I hoped to write for you tonight.
Right now I am a shelf without a book,
a harbour without lights,
four connected walls that refuse to make a room.
Yet here they are,
pinned between each tick of the clock.
Wedged inside the flaming chorus
of these endlessly whistling candles.

Bat

The air was cooler tonight.
A sign of autumn approaching.
It felt like she was a girl on a bus,
just a few stops from here,
gathering up her things.

A bag of long shadows,
a purse bursting with her relucant sunrise.

I was filling a glass with water in the kitchen
when it flickered across the window
like a frantically blinking eyelid.

Then on the other side of that glass,
I stood on the grass
as it circled again and again.

A neat bow tie
turning knots of it’s own
in the air above my head.

It could even have been a single bow
from the tail of a shadowy kite.
Or even the kite itself,
flown by an ant – standing at my feet
on the path – tethered to it’s tiny grip
by a silvery strand of spider’s silk.

The Copado Cactus

This morning I walked a winding trail
from this cabin through the woods.
The air was warm,
thick from last night’s rain.

Fallen pine needles softened
on the wet roof tops.
It was so still
not even the crowns of the trees swayed.

The only sounds, the drops of damp
falling through the highest parts
of the spiny canopy.
Though none of them ever seemed

to reach the ground.
It brought to mind
one of those rainmaker musical instruments.
How all those tiny pieces

tumble down through the many levels
one at a time.
And how they also never finish their fall.
There was a surprising absence of life.

No grouse to peck it’s way through the third stanza.
No rabbit to chase an adverb
through the final phrase.

I felt like Noah.
Making his final checks
before casting off,
making sure all were accounted for.

Then turning off all the lights,
locking all the doors,
damping down every fire.