1
Roman-straight the road for nigh a mile
no more chicanes of bridges (directions prioritized)
over brooks that bordered the village (just passed)
the little blue Ford fiesta doing fifty,
followed by the hulking white Toyota Avalon,
no sign of it overtaking, though I wait a while.
OK. No reason I can think of not to touch sixty*
indicate right, pull out, floor accelerator, all easy -
then suddenly I'm running out of road.
The Avalon has lost - has lost the plot, is lurching
out at me - and I near level with the driver's window.
One moment I envision myself dead in the hedge,
and I'm standing on the brakes to get me back
beyond her trunk and on some road to spare.
From there I hit the horn again, again, and
follow the Avalon past the Fiesta, honking
like a gander dander up, goose-bumps, horror:
What the fuck's your game you plonker fool!
Don't you look round before you pull out?
Or use your super blind-spot mirror then?
Or even your rear mirror, know I'm there?
You trying to kill me?
Pointless yelling, so I cut it out.
Big cars are very safe... if you are in them,
being built like tanks and gadget filled;
otherwise, consider they might well belong
to someone with less sense than money
and even less acuity.
...........................
*Sixty M/h is the UK single-carriageway speed limit. 96 Km/h. I was alone in the car having just dropped my son Joe off at his house.
.....................................
2
I'd put in my eye drops ('gainst glaucoma)
and taken my statin ('gainst the Stilton)
when just because we cleared some garden space
today with children's help, a few wheelbarrow-loads
of grass-flesh,
I thought I'd lurch out late
to see what the moon was doing at this end
of day whose sadness, inexplicable till told me,
presented to me in my ignorance, in form
as any know my poems might comprehend.
So. Out to see the moon wrapped up in scarves
of cloud, elegant as Isadora Duncan, yet
older than She -
that light once honeyed
yet harder and colder than amber,
stepped on two snails, unseen, hence killed them -
stockinged feet: one, crush, two, crush.
No. No.
Ah!
It's so sad and shocking-strange how
sometimes roads of tears unroll and nothing
can be undone -
yet beauty never dies.
