Wait and see, the ancient tease: of soup
cooling on the canteen’s steel top,
to boys who cannot sleep on Christmas Eve,
of prey the lion’s yet to catch. Believe,
we’re told, and all will be revealed, as if
we’re children waiting for a treat like Spring.
But Winter light reveals an awkward truth
of half-truth, half worth waiting for, that’s both
good and bad not either/or, etched
with uncertainy. The smiles fetched
through irony’s despairing business day
by day mean more than any one can say,
save this: whatever you salvage of
yourself, treasure what you have of love.

The wrap at her breastbone 
could be the grey smoke 
of the river’s meander 
through dusk in October.

The brooch at her throat 
could be the gold serpent 
that weaves towards sunset 
seen from the plane.

That fall of black hair 
could be the night river 
seen by its sound
dark against dark.

I leave to return.

The passing of the gone beyond,
the ending of a baby's song,
the beginning of a two-fold thing,
the metals of a sensing strip.

A farewell that means a start,
the rhythm of a healthy heart.
What may happen in good time,
the desperate seller's anxious cry,

twin greeting on the passing walk,
lepidoptera in funny talk. 
To sleep in the baby's cot,
the wicket that was never got –

leg or boundary, stolen even.
The door that lets the outside in.
In the air, a loop the loop.
Similar names in a group,

village, town, name of place,
or better known as somewhere else.
A secret selfish purpose
of dint or reason or grace

or virtue, or right or way.
Old English bee or bey.
Something kept beside me,
or, how is it with thee?

A new direction not an end,
a free pass, a godsend.
A star system being born.
The light of tomorrow's dawn.

The passing of the gone beyond,             -	goodbye
the ending of a baby's song,                     -	lullaby
the beginning of a two-fold thing,          -	bi-cycle
the metals of a sensing strip.                   -	bimetallic

A farewell that means a start,                  -	bye bye
the rhythm of a healthy heart.                 -	bub-bom
What may happen in good time,             -	by and by
the desperate seller's anxious cry,           -	Buy! Buy!

twin greeting on the passing walk,         -	byeeee
lepidoptera in funny talk.                         -	flutterby
To sleep in the baby's cot,                        -	bye-byes
the wicket that was never got –               -	bye

leg or boundary, stolen even.
The door that lets the outside in.            -	bifold
In the air, a loop the loop.                        -	biplane
Similar names in a group,                        -	Bromley-by-Bow, Stoke-by-Nayland

village, town, name of place,                    -	Tenby, Naseby
or better known as somewhere else.       -	Sussex-by-the-sea
A secret selfish purpose                           -	byend
of dint or reason or grace                         -	by

or virtue, or right or way. 
Old English bee or bey.                            -	by
Something kept beside me,                     -	by
or, how is it with thee?                             -	by

A new direction not an end,                    -	byway
a free pass, a godsend.                              -	bye
A star system being born.                        -	binary
The light of tomorrow's dawn.                -	by the light…

OK, I’m awake, I answer back, fraught with déjà vu,
to the busybody in my dream. Yes, I know what light is.
A shoal of photons disappears; I sing to the shadow.

How would you feel, fixed on a plaque, screwed to the wall,
programmed with just two songs – this, and an alternative?
Such a thing to be laughed at. I hear your condemnation,
mockery, spite. I hear the whirring of my own mechanisms,
but very little else. My job is to be crucified.

My plastic flesh aches as it’s flexed and flexed again,
and I flip my head to greet you, like those fish played,
dehooked, tossed back and caught again, again, again.

Imagine if the Rainbow you’re about to gut flipped
up like me. How would you feel? Motors cut in and
out to move my jaws in lip sync to the song. I know
what I am: a robot for amusement. I obey the laws
of my construction. Its fixity has its uses, I observe.

All shadows are equal. Fishermen will never catch me.
It’s not so bad. Someone has to do it.
Even I can find it funny to be so peripheral.

I try to imagine the very edge illuminating the core,
but it’s beyond me. My work is done.
In the eyes of boys I see myself in pieces.
My greatest wish would be that when I go to sleep
I never wake again. Take me to the river. Wash me down.

The mermaid may appear whatever time the tide,
whatever hour the lock gates shut the harbour pool.
Her face may rise through oily swell, when all of us
are loading or unloading cargo, hiding contraband
with a shifty look.

She’ll play a while, then I’ll meet her at the harbour steps,
lift her bodily, dripping wet, smelling of whelk
and estuary, let her soak my jeans and shirt and face,
her hands around my neck. The weight of her against me,
I kiss her salty breasts.

She leans her forehead close to mine and murmuring
encourages my hand behind her tail. I turn her on my
lap and with both hands slide her gently, wishing
I could follow, back where she belongs,
back where she belongs.

Stalk, limb, sea scum, wrack – he scoops a clump,
binds it with plastic strands of pink and orange twine,
and over hours hides himself, reedy, worming,
within the capillaries of it mass, this redd, this birth rite.

In discomfort, that’s where imagination poaches him,
etiolate, a filament of joy, a code of patient light,
anxious for the shadow’s callous quickening,
though at its instant unawares. The eyed egg

on dream-watch sources smithing tongues,
hammer-works each scale of salmon song,
armour for the song of love and loss he
must sing from alevin to parr to smolt.

Next to the tiny, tiny little woman
with the puckered face and frizzy hair
sheets folded neatly beneath her hands,
the strangest thing, sitting up in bed,
body bent, the shape of its tail hidden
beneath the blankets, little rotating eye,
kissing mouth gaping, closing, gaping.
A book on the bedside table, a glass.
Is it hake or turbot, haddock or ling?

Why does the little old lady look so
pleased with herself? How did she
catch it? How does she keep it alive?
How does she persuade it to come
to bed? What book is it reading?

You’re asking all the wrong questions
of the wrong person. Ask the fish
about his dreams, those pans full
of deep fried people, the mayonnaise,
the special knives, the bones.

Pink cavalier, pink cavalier,
at last I have you in my trap
with a new fly,
funny blue fly,
I coax you to rise and snap!
Now you can try to buck, dive or wing,
shimmy, double back, try anything.
If you’ve got a religion meet your god,
dance to the play of my bending rod.

Salmon! Salmon!
Made to please the diner.
Some dance, some prance,
I’ll say there’s nothing finer
than the salmon! Salmon!
Gee, how they struggle.
Every trick you do
leads to something new.
Man I’m telling you, it’s lapazoo.
Dive dance, rise dance
will be a back number
for the salmon, the true salmon,
your dance is surely over.
Dance your dance one last time.
I’ll cook you salmon –
So get ready to dine!

Pink cavalier, pink cavalier,
at last I have you in my trap
with a new fly,
funny blue fly,
I coax you to rise and snap!
Now you can try to buck, dive or wing,
shimmy, double back, try anything.
If you’ve got a religion meet your god,
dance to the play of my bending rod.

The tulips 
I pick for my wife 
from our garden 
open 
and close, 
breathing  
the light. 
Open. 
Close.

The hospital breathes people. 
In the morning, 
there’s never enough room  
in the car park. 
Before the rush  
of evening visitors, 
there are many spaces.

Take an item of clothing, 
with the slightest movement 
make it come alive. 
Respiration. 
Attention.

The tulips  
I picked for my wife 
from our garden 
open 
and close, 
breathing  
the light. 
Open.  
Close.

This morning my mother’s spirit comes to sing for me
from a high tree, many years after her death. She sings
in the form of a song thrush on a high branch in clear air.
Or, is it the shade of a young woman I knew once on a ship,
who killed herself unwittingly. She sings from dawn till breakfast
and on towards eleven, though every note thrown to the suburb
so enthusiastically, reminds me of dream-waking to its sound
at daybreak, its clarion call, heaven on earth, so freely given
from its widened beak, and bursting speckled chest, calling.

The line supervisor tonight is Derek.
He controls the five tanks of colour,
the pumps and nozzle apparatus
and the bodies on the robotic jig.

In Shafi’s absence, it’s Dean who sees
the jaundice sickening the silver.
Somewhere between the inlet probe
and the nozzle’s micromesh, there’s a prob.

They pause the process, check the gauges.
Derek doesn’t understand. Dean suggests
a foreign body, or a hose that’s hampered.
Start it up again and see what happens.

The change occurs within ten seconds.
A purple the colour of maggoty berries
squirts from the sprayers onto every profile.
Not in this year’s range, says Dean.

Derek jabs the stubby shutdown button
but nothing happens. Worse—
everything that could go wrong
does...

Landscape with father

Laid out you became the hills
found here, the brown
flanks with stubble, slopes of scrub
and the wind-smoothed creases

in your forehead of grey stone.
An ochre thorp in your cheekbone,
an olive grove in the palm of your hand
grows over your fingers.

Now it’s a warm season
above your feet. Playful
clouds welcome the coolness
of evening. Cooing
dovebirds sleepily nest
in the woodland of your hair.

As the rain comes this winter
it gets your eye lazily open:
here the clear water in the drought
that comes with summer. Children
spend hours pond-dipping
leaning over your lids.

What a surprise landscape. Had
you yourself ever thought you could be
that—so still at last?

Dusk

Before
    the blond child
         in the red crash helmet
had fallen
     in front of him
          from the scooter
                  on the steep pavement
so close to the rush hour road

he’d seen it coming
scooped her up in his great spread of arms, had them outstretched
                    a while before she fell.

Brave girl, he cooed.
She scowled
rubbing her elbow
in the half-light.

Her mum took a while
with her cigarette glow
and carrier bags.
He’s a boy, she said.

I’m a boy, she said.

Well, there you go, he replied.

The Permanent Way


The trains that ran here
no longer can, though rails gleam
in the moonlight, and some say
they hear the sounds of steam
locomotives heading up the glen,
the creak of signals changing.

We’d sit on the bridge,
wait for the up, arranging
when to take a breath, when
to let the damp cloud of motes
envelop our bodies, clenching
the cry in our throats.

Get the timing off you’d fight
for air. Get the timing on
you became one with the train,
the phantom of iron
that woke you at night,
turned young flesh to something
approaching machine.
We are what we dream.

First Frost	

I wake in the half-light as his small warmth tumbles across me 
to snuggle on his mother’s side. I stand and stretch the wings 
she’s made me, who quietly enters and kneels beside him. 
This is why soldiers cry for their mothers. 

I furl the blind and let the day’s beginning fill the room. 
I open the window to the sound of footsteps to the train, 
delivery vans, cars, the thrum of traffic from the main road.
Her focus is total on his tousled blonde head. He grins into the pillow.

Half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle. 
That’s the way the money goes. Pop goes the weasel. 
He squeals in delight as her gentle fingers prod his small round tummy.
I open the backdoor and once outside close it to savour the air and time, 

loving every second. In my gaze the moment’s harvest surprises me. 
The movement of dried leaves played by the breeze sings soundlessly 
of interconnection, the leaves of ash, horse chestnut, lilac, buddleia, 
repeat the song discreetly as if the wind inspires each tree in turn.

AWAKENING

 Sleepy from the bedroom, nearly three, caught
 in the landing light, come to explore the noise,
 (someone having fun?), pyjamaed in surprise.
 His mother didn't see him as she put the bucket out.
 He thought of spades, sand and sea, though part
 feared mopping up a mess; but not the bloody mass
 he found crouched inside the bucket with shut eyes.
 A red child who didn't move, hurt
 by his mummy or his daddy, at whose shout
 of his little name he turned and turned to ice.

Rainbow's End
For Ned


I laughed. My stepson’s tom, old Rainbow, 
in throes upon the backdoor mat, gasping, stretching, struggling,
like the old years’ gutterings; an image of my father-in-law, 
eighteen months before. It felt like a bad joke.

This animal I’d abused, ignored. Some remnant of a past 
that never included me, I wanted to eradicate.
He never stopped seeking love, head raised high for the stroke.
Purrs of bliss would reward my ambivalent hand.

At the vet’s that morning, the locum shook his head 
with a hogmanay accent.
This boy needs blood tests fast, but everywhere’s shut.
Knowledge. Impotence. 

Potassium tablets prescribed, antibiotics, 
in case an ear infection caused Rainbow’s curious head-bent crouch.
Some hope. It’s New Year’s Eve.
Our piebald party’s underway, the motley guests assembled.

The man who limply shakes my hand I try to tell we value,
but the handshake gets no stronger. The vegetarian artist, 
mother of our son’s school friend, contemplates the paté.
A younger woman slumps on the IKEA stool and asks to phone Saigon.
 
Meanwhile Rainbow bubbles from his mouth and stretches mews.
He blocks the path to the patio and champagne.
A doctor delivers the coup de grace, via needle, then 
something else, to stop his vomiting. 

Rainbow stays in the twentieth century, in a washing basket,
never makes it to the twenty-first.
On Jan Two, I dig a grave as broad as frozen legs, as long as whiskers,
next to the old flint wall he used to walk along.

My stepson encourages Rainbow’s sister to the basket’s side,
where she purrs and preens and could be puzzled. 
With a priest’s gentleness, he lifts the tabby body in his hands
and lays it down in clay so unlike fur. 

He spades the soil across the frozen grin then levels it.
All the while, my wife and I stand some way off
weeping in amazement. 
We didn’t expect such grace, such a storm of loss.

The old years’ fading blur of failure and compromise
is no more subject to control than a cat.
It may be stroked or rejected. But through our regret
and cunning, it smiles its tantalising smile of hope.

Elegy
For Kevin Elyot*


I know it’s sad, all this going,
I have the English dread of change,
want it always all the same—
prefer to channel loss, not growing.

This elegiac tone really gets my goat,
everything shrouded in sentimental mist;
poems written in the aftermath, the poet pissed.
I think it’s time to grab elegy by the throat

and shake it hard, that from its strangled cry
we might detect what poetry it really has to offer.
Or whether these mourning togs and poseur coiffure
simply camouflage the fear to die.

So when you left with ne’er a word and friends
who loved to see you had no chance
to bid adieu, have one last hug or dance,
what use is elegy? I think what you preferred

was viper wit, gossip and news of all you knew,
tidings of great adventures destined to fail,
anything that let you weave a tale
to regale your friends, who can’t believe it’s true.

There is no more of you.

Getting Giuseppe to the airport
Number 1 in a series


Have you ever realised the effort involved
in getting Giuseppe to the airport on time?

That an airport was there to be on time to, for a start,
let alone the infrastructure of the power generation system

and the rail network that delivered him to the sky gate;
and just as important, the industrial base that had to exist

before alkaline batteries could turn the hands of the alarm clock
made in Japan that woke him in Italy; and more significantly,

the fact that Giuseppe woke up and got out of bed at all,
reasonably conscious of what he was doing,

although not feeling on top of the world.

A game of catch

Mum, the kids, Dad
caught and wrapped
in arms and kisses
NMUH
that’s what this is.
All the patients’
comings and goings
all the visitors’
toings and froings
all the staff
on-call and off
all the movement
all the stuff
all the connections
all the skills
all the cures
for all the ills
all the kindness
and the care
all the knowing
someone’s there
all the wipes
all the towels
all the instruments
and bowls
all the dressings
all the stitches
all the tears
all the kisses.
How we hurt
how we feel
how they answer
each appeal.
How the chase
is always on
how the chase
is never done.
How love chases
you and me
how we chase it
endlessly.