Snowmelt Here
Roofs and grass-tufts, car tops
touched with ice-mail
as white as any scale
shed by a cold-dragon
towards ethereality;
pools of drips
splash casual crowns thrown down;
but out in country chill the white
fields lie still and undisturbed
though verges, simply sodden, are
spattered with mud from wheel-sprayed puddles.
On the CD, Joe Hisaishi* chords strike
their keen annunciations.
At 'The House'
Eventually my Joe appears in doorway
blinking, serious, subdued.
'Where's his coat, his shoes?'
Ruffle hair and lead him out of there,
for a few hours.
His fifth day in jug, spirited away,
full term-time residential.
Ursula and I share glances
strung with occasion's cords
the bonds like snow forms on the air's wing,
distinctive, original, sad, similar,
feathers plucked from cold piano strings
to fall.
Delamere Forest
Freckled the woodland ways, beige bracken,
green brambles, ever opportune,
snow-lined the trees,
starker the line,
austere the monochrome.
Lake lost reflections to a bird-tracked glaze,
the little meres, spook rinks
demanding you shed gloves, fiddle with phones:
fingers must burn for beauty.
Joe tries a few old lines about square lights
and little brown beds, ignores the cold completely,
laughs a little, now and then. That's good.
Winsford Again
"They'd shank* you soon as look at you,"
says Brendan of the inhabitants.
In-town pubs are beery frowns,
TV football crowds - so we drive out a bit
to civilized parts,
______________sneak coke from rucksack out
to top up Joe's drink. In the warm we sit
to pass adjacent time before the hour.
Back to 'The House'
But when we draw up outside lit window,
the other lunks gawping out, Joe exits car
stands in his mudded boots and trousers,
we see him stagger a moment and pale out
as if the ground were changing underfoot.
We're brisk and brusque with hugs and pats.
Urshie and I to reassure the house
there is an extra change of clothes for him
and Urshie says, as we walk back to car,
"I didn't like that woman overmuch."
.......................
*Joe Hisaishi wrote the sound-track to 'Spirited Away' which is what is playing in the car.
* To shank - (verb) to stab.
Having split up with my ex-wife some six years ago, I have my kids weekends and more than half the holidays, and Joe, fortunately, has never been much trouble to me.
YOU ARE READING
Wintering
PoetryIt's yet another MajorSeventh. Hop on the big shoulders and look ... Lastest poems are always posted last in my collections. Winter. So, expect sparse gardens, late autumn and wintry countryside, wry philosophy and humour, tenderness towards litt...
