That scent is thick
of summer’s weep
of sweat under my
pits [slipped brims
will not offset fears
of skin cancer]/ My
plots to escape will
fail/ No tunnels yet
completed/ So – no
Tom-Dick-or-Harry
will save us/ A war
of words over heat
won’t win [fades to
a catastrophic era]
Your cars idle – A/C
cools you [fuck ‘em
all – we deserve it!]
& our PLAN B slips
from sweaty reach
Tag: global warming
It rattles
It rattles – as if a thousand
thousand bottles of drugs
are shaken [to reprove my
lacklustre skills in ticking a
prescription off – as thuds]
50 gram tablets – for God’s
addiction to sorrow-hits &
we wonder why July’s now
a monsoon season/ British
summertime’s hiss of burnt
offerings on wet barbecues
confirm it/ Global warming
& other seasonal shifts piss
down [inhale rich stenches
of methane’s quick release
& other disasters below us]
Our Last Songbird
What day is it? Does it matter
to anyone - perhaps for those
itemizing them now? I dunno’
I’m a chancy man [chav & liar]
among low canopies of song
Envy is mine – their names are
half-known – all descants new
even though I have listened to
them [countless times] before
in other coppices – other ways
We freewheel blind & armed –
so forsaking archaic relations
to & with & of – as if moments
no more matter & we are not a
scientific fact – we are an ugly
creature keeping to First Laws
of Motion [we become forces]
& having writ such rules shiver
them apart – with no remorse –
no hang of head – unless dead
& then we count those missing
souls & breeds – no songs left –
& we howl had-I-wist as if it did
really matter – as if we cared &
felt – but we are liars – perjurers
Flood Pains in Uckfield
“It was reported pigs
were moved to safety”
as Olives Meadow [&
lowly places] readied
river defences / Bags
of sand had been set
to safeguard that fine
dry cleaners down on
Bell Walk [no relation]
Locals dozed [steeled]
for damp renewals of
a [now] normal trouble
as my ex’s shed [sorry –
‘office’] sat tormented /
Such sudden erections
should be kept high up
[to miss wet torrents of
our flood-thrusted Uck]
Flood Alert
I am on a long-bet flood plain
An elevated gravel path leads
beside pumpkin-cut grimaces
Eight grin-lit detached houses
bid shameless sharp views of
rooms & rooms & rooms [It is
too early to draw our curtains!]
& I walk [spectral] below sight
lines of slipped lounge lizards
on an orbit back to my ghost’s
town / Not much has changed
[apart from rain] in my scarcity
Troop-hoofed paths capitulate
to further boot tracks – to trails
of dogs & bikes / There’s more
rain on its way! / Amber flashes
heighten concerns for riverside
mortgagees [reviling long bets]
Here pebbles melt into grass &
a playing field – untouchable to
kids at this time of year – now a
playground [of sorts] for nosing
dogs & their equally dull owners
[my tribe of lead & turd carriers]
A hill rise – between doped rides
of swings & slides – then there is
my grey Ex-wife – I pray she can’t
see me – but prayers never work
on side-raining days – & my plea
is unanswered as she raises her
voice as if to her dog [but to me]
& I’ll vomit [spew?] all her letters
back at her – spit – no matter how
wet it makes her [Love is a route
to hatred – if your lover lives a lie]
There are no wagers now for our
solicitors or mediators to pursue
My climb finds me sitting – a rest
as my dog runs rings around her
bitch – I’ll call & she’ll return – see?
Desert Lined
As if lined Nazca will ever be deciphered
Geoglyphs were man-pressed passages –
a way to work out their god’s failed plan
among desert rocks & cracked ceramics
Cahuachi collapsed after deforestation –
as if a quiet prelude to our imminent ruin
By satellites [& drones] their paced paths
confuse all hypotheses & feed ignorance –
they growl with each dug hard exposure
of bone & cracked container holding only
air – will our remnants also crumble – will
we leave any account of why we declined?
If this accident will
Kurt Vonnegut Jr didn’t believe
that your glaciers would thaw –
they are frozen [eternal] as are
man’s wan desire for a crusade
[as enduring & always present]
Those to-war fools [& oil-dupes]
will not agree what will slacken
beneath / Battles will be fought
for water’s last spill [So it goes]
But glaciers will not be involved
as our nations burn without war
& our conflicts shift [So it goes]
E270120
My Bodies
My first body pumps coal blood –
strata – not veins – my black toxin
dug at by my antecedents & now
burning in our ravenous furnaces
My second body sucks stuff from
machined seams too deep to see
& bays for copper & tin heaved by
poorly-paid labour in toiled places
My third body will not take painful
slights of air or sunlight’s touches
& will only feed on what remains –
toiled-thin soil & scarce resources
My fourth body will not know how
we managed to f*ck it up – just so
My second body will be disgraced
by a dragged out record of shame
My third body will not be able to fix
such avarice – a beneficiary of less
& will worry more than I’ll impress
upon my fourth – my nefarious self
A Drowning at Sea
I will loosen four circles –
four can yokes/four loops
Four collars – four nooses
or four buoyant garrots as
a fifth still holds them all –
no – I will not save our sea
It took one of my forebears
off Sunderland’s cold shore
whilst my father was pulled
underneath for days & days
in submarines – an unnatural
act – a voluntary Mr Bartley?
Whilst my five rips will never
keep any ocean or turtle free
from tugs of alcohol – instead
I will get drunk again & recycle
The Shortest Day
Time has not yet inclined enough
to coerce any kind of difference –
perhaps later – sometime in June
when we’ll see our pined-for light
[stuck as we are – in addled mud]
Our need for summer dried paths –
of kicked up grit – of lifting dust –
of seeing our harder route ahead –
no more digging out trod-in ooze
Scorched days will be our saviour
is a rumbled thought under clouds
But we forget how humour sweats
under a higher temperature in our
too quick to exsiccated landscape
Longer days will not find us shelter
from any localised weather events
& so we reshape our collars & caps
to make this shortest day bearable
Look Away
There are too many to read
or understand –
no chance
in our burning time
of warmer days –
no time left
between climbing high tides
We will never comprehend
what we see
when we look
overhead at spitting lights
beamed at 186,000 miles
per second
And then even more bared
by your long-gazed appraisal
as we chart
our growing ignorance
of what is beyond our reach
No time left for us
to fuck them up as well
Sirens
In that moment
when your cup tips
you will sip
on emptiness
It is already too easy
to taste nothing –
too easy by delineation –
another failure
but a profitable design –
a greedy manipulation
We pass tipping points
as lost time is re-defined
by low mutterings
about our obvious losses
but still not openly
noted –
not tabloid-known –
Still unseen less stuff
Enter no payments
against overdue bills
Forget out-of-print
backorders sought online
Dismiss forthwith
learning other languages
Possibly embrace
Morse Code’s flat voice
Forget your mortgage
and overseas trips
Come with me under
a protective stairway
Pray – It is now too close
to that fearful time
of no refills or top-ups
Old bombs will drop
Eremocene
It is impossible to maintain
a rooted perspective –
Heraclitus observed
as he openly wept
It is not the same river
but we are also
not the same people –
that will be my shooting stick
to lift me from stiffnesses
of age and old iniquities
Those rivers now rise
under too-warming urges
My car’s curved high glass
requires less screenwash
through summer-flown months
There are no insects to smash
All through it my kids sit blind
behind their bright-eyed phones –
we do not know how much less
they see on their screens now
Birthday Presents
For WM, on yr 15th
It is now that time
we scan around
and make honest
our current account
of fouled landscapes
and our – ever – endless
opaque cloud makings
by cheaply-oiled flights
over raised high banners –
bearing boasts of growth
and much-much-wealth –
as if such heavy hauls
leave no poisons – no trace –
no residues – no spillages –
no inhaled lead in blood
And tell them how
it will be
in ten years time
or twenty more –
or whichever
we can hope to bear
And look with me
into their eyes
and say –
Kids this will soon be yours
to fix – Good luck
Rental
Hear them – those
too-near rushes
of combustion over tyre-rubbering
There – beyond my fence
I am just fifteen yards
from others’ entered destinations
This is a hermit life
but one with too much –
too much man-made stuff – such is soon useless
My sleep has re-aligned
as it did thirty-odd years earlier
to that of shift workers – once more an hour earner
I am a slow returnee
to my hollow house
of paid-for slept protection before one more day
This Bank Holiday Monday
sucks on my date-fixed time
as I lie bared-as-born on my artificial lawn
I must plant
some lavender in pots
My garden is not an insects’ paradise
My skin will blemish
under our turned-to sun
as my spread chemical vest of UV block – of factor fifty
unlocks and rolls off
under man-made laws
God wasn’t always for burning our butt-naked torsos
Amateurism
I want your planes to stop
I want your cars to stop
I just want to hear my stick
atop this pitted blacktop
and be able to name each call
of fifty-ish birds –
that is all – before
their loss from our low land
Words for Mud
We trampled under re-tugged hoods
across even wetter exposed ground
like low-eyed parlour-set cattle
both of us making that slab slurp
as we pulled our sucked heels
from immeasurable puddles
Stoach – was it uttered as mud
and air and boots glued? – stoach
and slab – discarded once-words
now rarely spoken – only by smeery
glazes – by worn pathways
There Wealden clay will complain
as hill-walked hours wear it away
Time will eventually reverse to tell
what truly lies beneath our feet
Then all our losses will be obvious –
no flights – no travel – no sinking islands
on TV – we are making errors here
Ashpan Texas
Your waking place
is a hollow-man’s town
with vacant homes
close to falling down
and solar-curled paint
peeling inside out
No drapes to draw –
now shadowed shrouds
That un-slept place
is your reading room –
all indexed resources
were wordlessly removed
There’s spines – there’s covers –
but no truth in sight
A baying Governor
set writ words alight
They say work’s returning
although don’t know what
They’ll be whispering lies
’til you thumb your vote
Your feared sun sits low
but still left life all peeled –
stealing a gloss layer
from that you had sealed –
taking your hours’ labours
of eye-cut brushes –
torching your hand of care
Your town’s burning up
E041119
Breakages Will Be Paid For
If we retune our focal point
to close-up local degrees –
before losses mount and tip –
we will shore our existence
Beauty is frail underfoot and
to be stepped lightly upon –
not a fixed distance of
uncrushable listed hillsides
Those huge labelled targets
are easily miss-able
Our urgent responsibility
is in within our short reach
of to-touch and other such
breakable display items
An Untitled Insect
It once had a name –
by dint of those
orange-tipped wings –
and on my tongue’s tip too –
a too-rare flitted hurdler
of garden hedges and fences
No one else cared
Such is our loss of simplicity
that even a vibrating bee’s hum
seems misplaced – mechanical
Our young dog was spell-bound
by a fat black house fly –
I no longer swat them
One Word
Over six thousand
languages
may not adapt
in our short time –
under these
fleet-to-melt days –
to define
our recent misprize
We may never find
a finite word
to headline this
imminent collapse –
of my land –
of your land –
this land’s made
for you and me
Our recourse
won’t be in songcraft
or in bleeding
apologies
to those who look
at this – from then –
and those who left us
clean legacies
On either side
of our personal abyss
we will still tilt
and lever that width
in which we will fit
our half-life guilt
of consumerism
and thrilling greed
We old men of grey
and women in beige
have broken
everything –
without a word
to our kids
without an apology –
we don’t do sorry
Do not travel
unless you do not return
Reduce our desecration
of crushing
of what just about still exists
by not coming back
to report your travels
in books and glossy mags
Pound Store
My authorised version
of the holy book
declares that avarice
will kill us all off
which we declaim aloud
being self-anointed
by those inner whispers
of our godhead voices
Our gor-bellied lives
of fulfilment are fed
by our sating purchases
drawn down from less
Our bounties are mounted
under rented roofs
which we brace with debts
bought from richer fools
A momentary fear
meets a mirrored mall face
a lost reflection
in our buying game
We have nowhere to store
next year’s seeds
Our homes are stockpiled
to meet instant needs
Our righteousness is always
hard at work
filling our lives
with meaningless worth
Warming
Each bared upper branch
is sunset-torched
oxidised
reddened
by that last touch of low light
off this third month’s fooling dusk
A slumped red hour
ending a widely-held disbelief
of an unexpectedly warm day
in March
once marked by late snow
but not by my fifth decade’s
birth date
now re-set by
summer’s early incremates
but we are equally annoyed
by a chill off this cooled evening
after sunburn at midday
in spring
Bee
Their massed die-offs
are merely statistics
fixed by white-suited
pollinators
in huge trucks of profit
who are forever re-filling
their hired-out hives
between pollen buyers
and ramping-up bee prices
Colonies will collapse
under modern diseases –
by man-spread illnesses
and by slicings of trade
Neonicotinoids may kill
the striped-arse armies –
but other – larger forces –
shade their sun-dance ways
Shipping Forecasts
We will struggle for storm names
and typhoons will be numbered
in the Northern Territories
We will enjoy sequential weather
and buy rain and shade covers
in equal measure for such events
Extremes will be downgraded to normal
They will re-define old tide charts
re-draw shorelines and flood plains
But we will suffer drought and wildfires
through months of cracks and widenings
without the squibs of English summers
From across the channel tiny migrants
will swarm in the blown air to find succour
among failing crops in Kent’s dry garden
We will struggle with Biblical excesses
and nature in the new ways of weather
which we will not be able to name
The Bird Table
That waking ear-fill of true birdsong –
as if found – was in truth brought on
by my flickknife choice – by my cutting
at connections to streams and channels
full of self-satisfied chattering
My re-designed distance from others
is freeing me from time’s smother –
to clear air and breath – no misty poisons –
no more breathing in expunged words –
those wonder curls of sour exhalations
We had massed – no more pas seul –
for crumbs – to sip at our shitted-in pool
of held rainwater and waded warm piss –
We were fattened on sour disturbances
which festered as their offered titbits
making us so sick – so we did not dare –
there – to old wintering in the warm air –
instead – we consumed – I am unable
to make it to your shared high place –
I am off – I no longer feed at your table
Finding Signs
There is a languageless rule to reading puddles –
to understanding such first-glance nothingness –
their impossible silences before trod-in signage –
a gauging of place – now – by such offered inches –
ones dredged by tyres – those in unfettered lees –
below busied hedgerows – there held evergreen
against all buffettings – such pleshes can guide
you when compass-less – a small-ish understanding of
nearby prevailing wind helps to fix your position –
known conditions assist in your marking a route
by each reading – taken – it will give you knowledge
not spoken to others from your stared-at puddles –
and flooded plough trenches – and by potholes –
by rain dropping – as storm-clock worked droplets –
and of damage done by such small repetitions
over time – as nature finds less is left natural –
then you will need a new sign language
to name each stranger season of weathering –
whilst you struggle – again – to pass your folklore
without old landscapes to bind your tired stories –
as floodwater-and-thirst rise to alter all readings –
except those re-told by your oldest survivors
of what they saw before – in muddy gatherings –
their earliest evidence of man’s impact on earth –
as Robinson attested – as he circled heel-and-toe
on virgin sand – to find a matching disappointment
in himself at marks he made – huge ramifications
Latitude
Our eucalyptus tree
is now my distant
Australia –
Our olive tree
is now my recent Israel
and in-between –
in our English garden
of other imports –
our thirsty plants
look more suited
to wetter climates –
they limp without
the pull and whip
of overnight water –
English summers
play redefined dates
of season starts
and season-ends –
They struggle whilst
the olive and eucalyptus
bear climate changes –
as if born to the latitude
The Word for ‘Search’
This abstruse epoch of endless information
is a virulent strew of ingrowing metadata –
It is thrown wide like blindly hurled seeds
We have set the volume to unheard of levels
and whine about the pain as the cooled servers
draw enough kilojoules to run a billion light bulbs
This is our second flood – set to lift much higher –
an oily risen tide upon remote isles – floating nodes
litter the no longer habitable low lying atolls –
those last places wired into free knowledge –
they are being removed by our unedifying worship
of the lords of the clouds – those five fat silos
And when we have drawn the last of the gold –
the silica – the bauxite and life from this place
we will no longer have any word for ‘search’
A Forecast
There will be a cold sluggishness –
not known since those tardy days
of queued-at red telephone boxes –
impatient lines still in that set chill
after autumn – which was in place
and felt raw ’til the following April
We kids constructed six-foot slides
by compaction and then an ironing
of the snow into break-neck ice sheets –
We knew how to travel back then
with flagged arms and slightly bent knees
and how to scream so bloody loud
We were tough – proved by bruises
under bloodied flaps of cotton and skin –
met by back door shouts and clipped egos –
admonished and shamed – sent to strip off –
to be hot-bathed by inherited remedies
of soap and TCP – but limited sympathy
The Amber Light
I was caught staring at the amber light –
the pause – the stop – the pushed brake
before the collision – before the crush
of border patrols upon the quick-shift
of dream-skinned people in frail boats –
none suited to such a rolling exodus –
all ferried by the free-traders of prayers –
they place a high price on such reveries
And now I can feel the white-grinding
of ice masses – of quickened melts –
of glaciers’ hurried abrasions on hills –
that accelerated ablation of fixtures
We will become the low-down migrants
without any possessions – of land or time –
as the seas rise to match the price-per-head
of our negligence – then my children will cry
and they will look at me – my poor pledges –
and try not to believe that I too plundered –
that their mother stole – the last lit chances –
to stop the incited rise of sea levels and lies
#BlackFriday
I crumpled – again – this morning –
with the endless news – which I cradled –
still warm – in my left hand –
then this unplugged device dimmed
to save on power usage
I stroked the sempiternal story
with a stiff finger – re-lighting it –
the act of scrolling – like teasing skin
with love’s lightest of touches
to bring a waking company to life
My roll-over nights of trickled
sweat-streams will be re-stoked –
Reuters reports of more kinds
of fucks – of over-heated ice
washing from those off-white poles
They now count the last of a species
on one hand – measuring the missing
in thin percentages – filling media inches –
which shift plastic – that advertised crap –
I crumple with such endless news
#ExtinctionRebellion
You stood together
deep and wide enough
to stop cars from crossing
London’s tarred bridges –
leaving the delayed
Fucking! at your solemn belief
whilst blocking the concrete
arteries which cross and re-cross
that leaden slug – the Thames –
But the oil-soaked rags –
those still-connected papers –
only reported the traffic chaos
#extinctionrebellion
#RebellionDay
The Word of the Year
So there it is –
single-use –
the Word of the Year –
almost invisible
if not asked
what it means –
its weight
in the mouth –
on the lips –
a negligible act
but what a
colossus of burden
out of that place –
screwing the planet
Venezia è la Prima Inondazione
Over four feet deep
across St. Marks –
risen too much
for high tide footpaths –
or trolley bag trundles
on dry cobblestones —
The Death of Venice
is the latest show
Goodbye Miami –
and New York too –
whilst Shanghai sinks
into Hell’s hot stew
This Parish
We stick to the leaf-kicked route –
a parting of the dry sea of leaves
cleared by dog-following boots –
We tack down its meandered drop
to the time-softened abyss –
plugged not by God – but drains –
where a watercourse once hollowed
the hillside into this shallow dean –
before the slugs of tarmac upstream –
Here the irregular plots of silver birches
ignore the fallen old lady in lime green –
this is the parish of ineffectual giants –
these natives – a copse within the woods –
are a finger-daubed fearful tribe in white –
chary – waiting – as if standing ready –
listening for the infected invaders
from other places – for intruders
who will bring other such followers
to spread the canker and pestilence –
which was not the way things changed –
not until we changed the weather
October Half Term
The paths were soft under me today
although this low sun is still capable
of tricking the insects into revival –
setting off a dragonfly over the bridge
and pulling late flowers from pods
until the quick slaughter of an early frost
will clear our compound of anxieties
for the seasons – those off-kilter fears
which are felt as warmth on the skin –
At such a late time of year – she says
to her friend over steam-lifting coffees –
I rest my stiff legs under the cafe table –
I feel no quiver of guilt at the dried mud
which is the hardened path to my seat
Pevensey Levels
The filleted contrails
meet at an equal
destination over there –
weak carbon offsets
of traceable aspect lines
for the flightpath artist –
but not strung long enough
for the followed eye to apply
into the capture of nature
It is runway flat under them
so pray they don’t align here
and find this level for land
Gravesend
The singing whale
sang canary song
swimming upstream
in the river of kings
Almost a portent –
a white flag of truce –
dipping and guiding
her head by the moon
There will be a dinghy
to greet the creature –
to check her origins
and to refuse a visa
We know too well
that her journey will fail –
in that dead end course
taken by other whales
The Flood
There’s a shifted density in the landscape
following your biblical month of rain –
It has been days and disturbed nights –
a battening of doors and shutting-ins
My chosen path is tread-thickened soup –
the mossy velour on my usual pew
is now an orbicular stump-top sponge –
my meditative place is soaked right through
The dripping leaves of the common hawthorn
are plated to silver and bent in prayer
by the salty weight of God’s squeezed tears –
here funnelled from him by the doctrinaire
Where my path rises with logs as steps
the deluge descends in no need of grip –
making me turn to take another route
to the higher ground where your boat should sit
In your clearing – of the sawn and fallen –
you list in pairs and shout deaf-ear orders
finding many gone – or now missing –
‘I have to postpone my plans for The Flood’
Your holy fable finds a level in puddles
where water pools in the lowest place –
and in the clearing there is no Ark –
Others will say when the seas are raised
Out of the Woods
The soil is dry and compacted
under the last threadbare fall
The laggard stream clogs
between the dropped branches
The cow parsley – and others –
stand as unpicked summer fossils
The weighty berries tease
among sharpened brambles
August should now stutter
into the slow rot of Autumn
But that immigrant heatwave
has not shifted from us
The seasons are so confused
by our greedy interference.
Eclipse
I danced my weight home
to a no-eclipsed Moon
whilst reports of Her crimp
were reduced – removed
Her amber qualities
here timely-abused
by a shifted Earth’s
slow sun-spun cruise
As we sweat into sleep
and tug on warmed fear
please pray for a God
who will rain on us tears
If no good will fall
on our field-wide droughts
then pray to the Devil
for floods to drown doubts
Expect little beauty
in this high hemisphere –
whilst long winds spin
the clouds quite queer
And if all such plans
only map out to dust
then take to the lake beds
and imagine them lush
Drink the low waters
which form as warm pools –
but do not imbibe
the next epoch of fools.
Early Rising
I let the cool air in over the parquet floor –
my temporary mistress for these few hours
before the sun fucks her rude heat
back into our brick and glass box
I said we’d need blinds to counter this
warming of the morning face of the house
But my pronouncements were stale –
like unpalatable coffee breath kisses
In the room without windows we had sheltered
from the fallout of this sky-dropped summer –
there for an evening of radiation off the TV
which in itself fed the ice-threatening heat
At this hour the bedooms are containers
of the sheet-shoved and half turned over –
where the poorly slept bodies simmer
and adjust to itched consciousness
It is only five o’clock but the sun has risen
at this point on the turned earth’s surface –
Soon there will be words about the weather
and requests to fix the sprinklers will be made
Beachcombing
On the shingle-driven beach – I looked for shells – but found plastic
We are no more the guardians because everything we use returns
The indicant we find is a tide mark of oil-based products
As kids – we looked for rare treasures after the waves had retreated
Mermaids’ purses and seaweed – our stolen weather stations
The currencies of beachcombing are no longer nature’s ways
E221018
Fall
Almost December
and this bit
of our northern hemisphere
is being tricked by the
man-made warmth
into putting feelers out
from within
the false Spring which catches
too keen lifeforms and me
I am over dressed for
these modern Novembers
The Hunt
Hunt down the ragged fox,
reduce our long-earned rights,
set dogs upon the immigrants,
‘claimants should be denied‘:
Praise The Mail’s honesty,
share their Photoshop of lies,
become a born-again Christian,
to fight off Islamic cries.
Bitch about striking workers,
and ‘those sponging socialists‘,
stand up for the landed wankers
whose shined brogues you long to kiss:
Now you are a Conservative,
voting for returning to the past,
you will fight them on the beaches
once our borders return to France.
And as your vast shares in disaster
push tides and break up skies,
your pension fund will collapse,
and your children will ask you: ‘Why?’
Solstice, Uncelebrated.
Today the sun tipped-up
at four forty-three –
kicking cats and dogs –
it then will scathe across
the sky for sixteen hours
and thirty-eight minutes
(plus eighteen seconds)
which will be the longest day
over a liquescent London –
before dropping out
twenty-one minutes
after nine – hated
E270219
Field Work
I write this, aching from my simple effort,
now bench-propped, on Luxford Field,
with car shunts and engine revs behind me,
then killed, still, replaced (for now) by birdsong.
This afternoon, under ripe end-of-March sun,
(we will judge once more with warming fears),
I wave at the future, upright in a buggy,
trundled up the path, bobbled over lifted roots.
And then the farcical entry of a dog shocks
the three matte pigeons, and a shined rook,
which lift away, leaving the expanse empty,
untimely, far too early for the annual fair,
it’s arrival to be rung by the hammering of pegs.
That fun, on this field, is still a drought away,
until then there will be the scattering of litter,
couples snogging, and teenagers swigging.
But today, with this lunch hour to be consumed,
and low warmth enjoyed, the town joins me
in the old art of laying, uniform, on the grass;
one skill which we were taught well at school.
Our Last Frost in Sussex
08:24 and I am touching that poke of a cold God
under unornamented woods
now contained by us – for the good of us
February is sugared overnight – here underfoot
The stripped hedgerow is briefly lit – crowned
by the blinding hour
Those umber-dipped high stick fingers
touch that very last of His
visible burnt presence
Along a raised path – my short timber route
over flood-expectant meadows – a convenience
for us dog walkers – commuters – drunkards
It has a ship’s complaint under my overweight –
a seaworthy distrust of an unstrapped cargo
My stick a peg leg poke across her slippery deck
Greater tussock sedges – rare Sussex clumps of grass
are green icebergs – gathered – they wait for an onslaught
by knotweed and other foreigner floods in this field
after the cold-breath time has been put aside – quicker
with each warmer year – a woodpecker stopped
in Buxted – 08:32
The Last Frost in Sussex
08:24. I am touching the last of a cold God,
over unevens, under unornamented woods,
now contained by us – for the good of all:
February over-sugared, overnight, here underfoot;
the stripped hedgerow is briefly lit, crowned
by the blinding hour, those umber-dipped
high stick fingers touch the very last of His
visible burnt presence.
Along the raised path, the short timber route,
over the flood-expected meadow, a convenience
for us led dog walkers, commuters, drunkards:
It has a ship’s complaint under my over-weight,
a sea worthy distrust of unstrapped cargo,
my stick a peg leg poke across her slippery deck.
Greater tussock sedges, rare Sussex lumps of grass,
green icebergs gathered, wait for the June onslaught
of Japanese knot weed, a foreign flood in this field
after the cold-breath time has been put aside, quicker
with each warmer year. The woodpecker stopped
in Buxted. 08:32.
Degrees
It is early October, in my sixth decade,
this low sun’s heat now obfuscates:
Two score fears of Betjeman’s bombs,
aimed to rain down on everyone;
that threat, then stalled, by a melt of Cold War,
but on the horizon a more terrible storm:
MAD-placed positions offer limited balance,
but we are slow-burning this lonely planet.
My neighbour’ll not prune until her last flowers fall,
but such lore set aside, now the sun misrules.
I stand above my shadow, as sundial and god,
my presence on earth more than enough,
to have been found guilty, on my own conviction,
my residence is toxic, I shan’t be forgiven:
I return to the shade, under still-green trees,
a level walk home, up by two degrees.
MIKE BELL | 10,000 Poems 