SUNSET REGISTER

At the appointed time

Over the clamour

Of birds he says 
Now settle down

And they do, absorbed

Into the heads of trees

He takes out his blue pen

He says now Red Mountains

Here sir and upon their backs

He pushes his blue pen

Nudging them under the earth

He says now Yellow Fields

The spears prick up Here sir 

He unscrews his blue pen

Flooding them with ink

He says now Green Oaks

They rustle Here sir 

He scratches them out

Their splinters on the wind

He works his way around the room

Ticking off the tiny beasties

Crossing off each bird
He leaves the crows till last

With no song to carry

Even the wind pipes down

Until he comes to me 'but you are not

On the register - you will not sleep'

'I am a new starter,' I say

His blue pen blots out the sun

'Then you have a lot to learn'

ON THE WING

And the fat black dragonfly 

That would not leave me be 

Clicking its wings as it passed 

Like a troubled folk singer 

Longing on the heavy air

ON THE BREAKFAST TABLE

I ball a fist and box my ears, I've done it again

On waking from the softshell of sleep, a meeting

Of old friends unseen and forgotten, save there

To open a page of news and what and for what? 

Stupidity reigning down in fire and spit 

Roasting the little bits of momentary peace

The stench so strong it burns off my nose  

And like a tiny god, I lay and worry 

About the stale food on the plate of man

As he sweeps the crumbs from the breakfast table

UNREAD LETTERS

The umbrella on the table

The beads run off the material

And onto a pile of unopened letters

An idiot must live here 

SHORT RETURNS

I
One summer, I began hammering 

The nails into the old chestnut

Climbing higher than my room

I wanted to live up there, with Calvino

Dahl and all the other wanton boys

But my weedy arm hadn't fixed it deep

And when the tree spat out

The metal root, the sky shook me 

I fell into the blue for a fair few days 

When I touch the nook in my arm

I begin to fall again, onwards and up!

II

I spent the day on the end of a spade

Tearing up the wet earth, making hillocks

And mounds; holes for the sake of holes

A neighbour was humming Rocketman

Scratching around with a metal rake

The same song, the same day

Year after year, can it be true? 

This lonely late and toiling mayfly?

I once caught a glimpse of him

Through an eye in the fence

A leather coat on a tower of leaves

III

Our rabbit, by its proximity to the field,

Caught myxomatosis and its eyes 

Glazed with horror, it stuck to the corners

Of the wood hutch, we had to peel him away

When the burial time arrived

No words just a sob from my brother

When he saw the quietness of death

Though it was not very romantic this one

I had the old spade, chopping at the cold,

Stubborn earth, snorting clouds of breath;

I made a meaningful hole

IV

Being cooped in for so long, my  

Inside were aching but now the doors

Opened; windows burst on their latches

Straight out and into it, a good wallow

All my earlier work was gone, the earth

Filled my pits and levelled my mounds

The chestnut was armed with its spears

But this was a season for new ideas

I plot my maps and draw my points

I shall steal something from this garden world

MORNING VISITORS

Over the past few sunlit mornings

I have taken my coffee outside

While watching a quiet spider

Build his frame on the box bush

Today his prize was finished

And a horsefly bumbled in

Jesus did it wriggle the doorbell

Until the tiny spider let him in

The visitor must of been tired

He passed out immediately

It was just like sleep

He chose to be swallowed

COMPOSED ON AN ANTHILL

And whoops 

My burning cigarette 

Falls onto an anthill

And they race to it 

Thinking, what an object 

here is something

For the queen

There are many casualties 

bodies but black so impossible

To see the char 

I offer my apologies 

My breath is unhelping 

The smoke thickens 

CANALSIDE

A long meandering walk by the still life of the canal, I counted at least twenty species of dog; from the ratdog all the way back to the majestic motherwolf. The sun was a tough one today and strong armed every whisp of cloud out of its path. The stone path lit up with its reflection; millions of cheap wet jewels underneath foot. And tyre, regattas of cyclists buzzed past with a huff and pant on their brightblack frames and sticky tyre. Personalities (on the whole) one step down from drivers, all haughty with the bell dinglinging for the footpad forever dawdling in his path. And it was always men. Though they didn't touch the day, let alone leave a mark on it. 

There was a comfortable silence to be found, walking into the mystery. My quiet while the scenery talked. The thrum of crickets and the burst of blackberry on my cheek on passing too close. The glugging motor of a lazy bony man with a hat over his eyes. An old hand at driving he can do so in his sleep. The rush of the trees, hardly a wind but enough to set the old oaks off. Everything talking in its own strange language which is a wonder to hear yet only half understood. 

A city of mechanised whyrr in the week - still seen on the ridges, hemming this canal path in; it is good to have the lapping of slow water on its end. There is a good mile of nobody, the algae here grown brave and amassing in the lock. The moorhens and coots (I forget which - some are red heads and the others, white skullbeaks) are diving beneath the leafy crust and breaking up; chattering and honking. 

And back into the talking world. The low whispers on a grassy hillbank with the big new Stratford stadium behind. Talk of work and light laughter.  While from a boat, "the village butty" the slow drone of an oboe and bouncing hand drum. Everyone masked behind sunglasses and in the guise of the old bone driver, the brim of my straw hat covering my eyes while I write these long words and the big burning question all ways, why do I not do this more often?

A woman in a flowery dress with bolt blue eyes offers me a massage, but my back is so sweaty I have to decline - for my own pride as well as her wellbeing. I watch her place a small balded man in her chair and begin on his back, rolling her small lithe hands against his skin; he has his eyes closed and looks in rapture. Ah, no regrets. I have a cool pint of ale served by a man dressed as a bee with a funny black hat. I find the book, slow progress through the icy landscape poems of Transtromer. I sleep. 

BEWILDERMENT

Here I am, a half finished man 
Mouth filed in a pocket somewhere 
While my hands bounce my eyes 
One bounds off into the night 
And it is in this little now; 
Amongst names and music 
In hushed evening talk 
That around me, 
The whole of creation 
Is figuring out what 
It might do with itself