One Size Fails All
Office chairs with starfish bases,
Wobbly levers, sofa wheels –
They never fit quite right, most cases –
Either leaving swinging heels,
Or bunched-up knees and hunched-down shoulders,
Wimpy pistons full of slack.
But still, a useful perch for folders
Till the backside needs it back.
Dry January
I overindulged last month:
Had far too many ideas.
Now I’m a bloated, empty husk
Who’s run right out of tears.
My motor’s barely revving now,
From weeks of crunching gears.
My spark is fused, my wit is blown,
I haven’t a thought to call my own.
January the Sixth
And with that, it is over –
The baubles taken down and packed,
The tinsel and the fairy lights,
The crib stowed with its Israelites,
The cards recycled, tree exiled,
The wilted wreath is rudely sacked.
That time has passed, so let it go –
The year moves on, the snowdrops grow.
Dig
Turning the soil is Autumn work,
Ploughing, forking, hoeing the loam,
Breaking it up before it freezes,
Driving the moles from their home.
Airing the worms out, harvesting stones,
And mining the black to bury the brown,
Dredging the roots up, combing the waves in,
Leaving the fields quite upside-down.
Sleep
I’ve heard there’s folk who sleep but never dream –
That must seem a waste of a night,
When I think how my mind is a-gleam with delight.
But point of fact, they do alright,
Just shutting down for hours on end
Affording them time to mend,
While not distracted by the random streams
That dreamers love to wend.
Coral
Coral, that was her name –
Not Carol or Cora, but Coral del Mar
Dressed in yellowy-pink, she came,
As if from an attic trunk or bizarre.
Prickly brittle, broken free,
Yet often shrinking into her shell –
She loved to watch the shallow sea
As if in want of a diving bell.
Armour
Beetles, tortoises, and nuts,
Pearls in shells and wasps in galls,
Hermit crabs in disused huts,
Rolled-up armadillo balls,
Frogs in mud and chicks in eggs,
Goods in crates and crates in hulls,
Drinks in bottles, bones in legs,
Feet in shoes and brains in skulls.
Cyclamens
In the Summer’s heat I bought ’em,
And they barely raised a leaf –
But here in the depths of Autumn
As the roses come to grief,
And while the first of frost is looming,
With the pumpkins come and gone,
So now the cyclamens are blooming
Just as though the sun still shone.
Day of the Dead
Nowhere in the Northern world
Could let the dead roam in the Spring,
When new life bursts and blooms unfurl,
And nights are shortening.
No, the Fall’s where they belong,
In piles of leaves and frosty air,
With creeping dark and waning song,
And the world in need of a scare.
The Supernatural
It may exist – it may at that – though we will never know,
Unless it can exert itself – but then we must ask when and how –
For if we ever see it come, or ever feel it go,
Then that – whatever that is – is as much a part of here and now –
For surely, supernature cannot ever be at war with nature,
Never interact with any thing with which it shares its space –
For even restless spirits must obey the laws of nature,
And even ghost neutrinos sometimes leave the faintest trace.
