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.

Skidby Windmill

The burning warmth of bourbon
and a paper and pencil
can fill even the emptiest evening.

Tonight I am thinking of the windmill
that I drive by twice each day,
how we have become like neighbours .

The ones who greet each other
with a passing nod
but who’s talk is always brief, polite
and is nearly always about the weather.

It stands on a hilltop.
An imposing giant chess piece
that - on seeing the ensuing conflict
- refused to fight anymore.

Those steel grey shoulders narrow
into a smooth waist that flare out into curving hips.
The ivory white top could be a great garlic bulb,
or spoon full of thick cream whipped high into single peak.

Some time ago it held it’s breath for me
as I revved through the pressing floodwater.
So many times I pressed it’s four rotating shadows
onto the dusty road on brightly lit mornings.

But as the sun rose today you had turned from me.
I saw you only in profile
as you stared into the spaces above the freshly cut fields.

And later, on my way home, I felt blanked.
Your back was turned,
your attention on something clearly far greater than us.

I will not forget those days when the winds were high.
Too high even to turn the opposing grind-stones in your belly.
And the way you just opened the slat-boards of your white sails,
allowed it all to pass through,
the song you sang as it moved into the distance.

So then shall I.
The next time the hounds of uncertainty
are straining at the harness
and baying wildly in the fog of the night,

I will throw open all of the many doors
in the hallways of my resistance
and allow them to pass through my spaces.

Just as the air passes so easily through yours.

Bullet Proof Suit

Mark today in your diaries.
Ring it on your calendars.
Gather together on a blustery cliff
and mount a plaque
or a erect monument of some kind
if you prefer.

It sounds like something
you would find in a dark corner
of Ian Flemming’s attic.
But today, it was created.

Spare a thought for the tailor,
standing on the cobbled workshop floor,
in the dim light of the fire’s dying embers -
so many years, a single spider,
spinning a web all alone -
His life’s work complete,
save one final task.

He pulls on a grey jacket,
rubs away the chalk lines,
fastens the top button.

After lifting a Smith and Wesson ‘48
from the coffin of the drawer,
he carefully selects a single bullet
and rolls it between his finger and thumb
like a small golden grape.

An empty chamber now full,
he turns the barrel selfwards.
Arms outstretched, palms together
as if in prayer, his thumbs press
the cold trigger.

The shot deafens the street outside.
Rooftop pigeons fly their ledges,
children grasp the mother’s legs.

Inside the clock’s pulse beats,
the kettle cools
and their air is cordite stung.

On the cold, bare floor
the tailor raises the drawbridge of his eyelids,
bringing into focus
the flaking plaster of the ceiling,
the burning pain spreading through his chest.

The Ears

You know the picture.
A pair of friends.
A group shot maybe.

Usually by a famous landmark,
an immense landscape
or on the steps of museum eating lunch.

But when the shutter froze the moment,
like an insect in ice,
the boy smiling - centre frame –
became a stooge, the punch-line of the joke.

The two flexed fingers raised behind his head
present an ass, a jack-rabbit – a jack-ass.

A photograph of friendship
intended to be cherished, now tinted
with the yellow haze of mockery.

And in the back of the scene, in a tree shaded café
rests an empty coffee cup, a stained steel spoon.