"This old man's day out,"
as I said to Michael, walking over leaf-litter,
masked and visored, glasses fogged,
under the shedding blood-orange maples,
along the broad strollway, in damp
air (air mean enough but not quite able
yet to pinch bare finger-ends
and thin-socked toes), Joe
jerking his giant frame onwards,
the holly stick awkwardly held
as he'd forgotten how to use it -
maybe a bit too small for him now -
muttering, he'd stop and then the shouts.
"Joe. Calm and safe," soothed Michael.
The journey up first over the plains
by Jodrell Bank to the Chelford roundabout,
well-to-do, grand avenues to tear
your heart out with their autumn beauty...
Oh, all the treasuries are open, spend-thrift
the mode, for stark tomorrows of bare wire
have to come, so rain down colours both
of earth and metal, mat and burnished, spin
restless the yellow road edge, indefinite...
as now of course the memories from inner trees
in sympathies, leach out such feelings
as might stun again- but for the automaton
driving on - leave anyone speechless
and still, lost on all the wrong moves ever
to knock over a glum king in resignation.
So, yes. I understand why Joe might find
in this quiet peregrination the need to rage,
as recollection fits the instep of his pace;
but there are so many people here today,
so many little dogs for him to flinch from.
Reclining on his bean-bag back at bungalow,
later, he asks me if he will get a new grandma.
I have to say it doesn't work like that,
that Grandma lived a long time but she died
and yes, she did say 'goodbye to Hunstanton
and all that' because she lived with Charlotte.
"You remember us staying at the house,
just us, when Grandma wasn't there;
but now the house is sold...."
When fate with cutters
plings those tensioned wires, how they jerk
and curl back on themselves, ball in the gut
and bleed from time to time.
...............................
Sketch
Showers in sun, illuminated illusions,
droplets streaking in their sunlit tubes.
Stuttering tails prompt infant blinking
and the gust-shaken trees behind
playing with a lashing rage-caged sunlight.
Their golds scratch at the dazzle;
their earths mausoleum and hang;
then shake mad heads to clear them -
seen through double-glazing in true
silent-movie style - all the five 'Nevers,'
forearm up to brow falls still by side.
