I dropped the poem I wrote for you
It rolled across the patio under the apple tree near the pool,
leaving on its perfect polished surface a tiny dent, no bigger than a baby’s nail.
Later, I saw a prince of wasps, resplendent and smart in his bright tunic,
fussily sipping at a trace of barely broken skin,
considering, delicately dipping, waving his feathery fronds.
As sun shimmered low across the pool,
a few words of my poem were still readable, in parts.
The bruise had softened and spread
to a half-moon of sweet ochre under the skin.
In the morning I rolled my dewy poem over, among other windfalls, with the tip of my toe.
A cave of muscavado rot and slack had
eaten it almost all away, and fed a scuttling earwig.
Tonight it remains; a rusty smudge on the paving.
I can’t give it to you now.
Have this one instead.
Sussex 2018
On Lowestoft beach beneath the Farrows pea factory
First the waves,
diamond-black with coal dust,
sketching charcoal spirals in the sand;
coal incoming from who-knows-where,
bobbing and ducking,
whorls stranded lacy scallops.
Then peas:
string after string, identical,
a necklace, a tiara again and again of peas jostling,
turning their shining round faces in the Siberian Suffolk wind,
pea lines swooping, sweeping green spray,
outlining my boots like momentary Klimts, and slipping back –
pea-green splashes,
and foam spring-leaping.
Behind me on the grey-sand beach,
my exotic, pea-filled footprints.
2019
