New Poems

Hands and the hour
for Joanna Marsh

We have one hour. Not one of us
has raised a hand to close the shutters yet

be-twyx the day and nyghte, nyghte
and the day, the halfway hall

between arrivals and departures:
brief illumination all along the street

before the body’s heat draws inwards
like a tent lit up, a row of tents, a camp.

In the precinct things are growing
hard to see, small papers

swirling there like leaves, not leaves
but birds, not birds but hands

caught between gestures of farewell
and stopping here. So many hands

small wingspans hovering
above the low fields of our fires.

Now winter is the world,
summer the life to come. 

First published in The London Magazine, 2024

 
 

Sky bar 10pm

Would I like to order a drink,
   stare down at the giant ferris wheel,
its corporate glow like a brand
   on the flank of the riverbank -
spirit of the fairground along with
   the stilt-walkers and hypnotist’s show -
believe almost anything?
 

Something else to go with that?
   A pair of those stilts, so that
like the adoring shepherds
   in the Mystery play I might step
directly out from here across the miles
   of marsh and lowland, become
a drone to bring back news
   about the messages in the sky:
 

What is all this light that shynes
   so bright here? A man
may be afright here, for I am aferde.

First published in The London Magazine, 2024

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