Wind piping through cracks
in the misting, gun-metal window frames,
so simulates the keening of aerobatic gulls
that I share smiles with those few who
catch at that humour of coincidence
in a hushed room on trial,
dinned with high, sliding harmonics
of a battered heater, tugging at reflection
like a sleepy fever.
Outside are featureless roofs
like those drawn by over-precise children;
faint smoke leaks to dissolve from similar chimneys
in drifting unison, articulated by blusters,
signalling, as the pens draft a drift of whorls.
Magnificently, the great sky-grey wings
display; suddenly curious at our statues;
an eye peers through rain streaks;
and then the tilted apparition slides
veering a spiral of emotional air
away, beyond the concentrated monotones of housetops,
past blue crevasse, dilute in sagging grey -
the shape of a memory.
..............................
*Invigilation is exam supervision. It's the common word for it in the UK but apparently not used in other countries. It's a stern and tedious exercise and one gets fascinated at what is going on beyond the classroom... which was basically not much but for the wind noises and then the unusual and memorable gull peering in event.
YOU ARE READING
Tapestries
PoetryPoems from 1978 onwards. These poems are in a different style from the later MajorSeventh, the earlier ones often with more of an Eastern-influenced cadence. Later, they vary a lot in form and style.
