Twigs
Empty trees like breath
where the sun that sinks at three
gilds the bronze canal.
Oxidic twig-fur
and the lightning, not quite straight,
of silver birches.
There is no bleached stalk
of the frost-gripped grass moving
to start the new year.
* * *
The fox savages
the dog, near where his owner
lies dead, head in mud.
He’s nailed in the chest
of water. The psalms are read
from a wooden book.
They revive, raised up
from water like babies, un-
breathing but alive.
Waking to the wing-
clatter as a pigeon slides
down an asphalt roof,
fingers in your hair
feel out the bump that grew that
dream, to rub away.
* * *
Two black boots and one
gold tooth gleam on the threshold:
“Sexy show, darling?”
Bored, her broad behind
sways as ‘Jolene’ booms below:
“…just because you can.”
* * *
A sleep-song, cock-stir
in dream is this tit-twitter,
twigs nippled in bud.
Colourless sky sinks
to earth. Four clear gulls circle
the trees’ naked nerves.
From the crumpled ebb
of the Thames, sharp wings lift them
back to where they drift.
Mud, paper, black leaves,
some bowed-down blades of grass, thin
and green: ground zero.
* * *
The stars like drops of
cold sweat; a short-haul jet banks
through Orion’s belt.
New moon standing clear.
She leans back slightly and smiles,
expecting her first.
The midnight fox looks
up, sees nothing in me to
stay for, and lopes on.
* * *
A liquid puzzle
made of springing trees outside
by morning’s blown rain,
bare limbs graced with drops.
First she puts on ropes of pearls
then the old green dress.
Electricity,
that hung on points of March, runs
out in April sparks.
Drunken daffodils
fall down wide-eyed, open-mouthed,
three sheets to the wind.
(A nation could stand
whose flag was woven of silk
as fine as these are.)
* * *
Like nothing crossed out,
pointing at a total blue,
singing for dear life
from a crown of eyes
of fire, of red-tipped apple
flowers going to burst.
* * *
Flared yellow, shot pink –
black trunks flex to bear their joy
and the states make war,
by the approaching
mass of their beauty, from base
to height ignited,
as though the payloads
were not to be delivered,
stone buds come to life.
Hands reach for the sun
and soil breathes grass, the small birds
are busy building.
John Gibbens
from Falling Down
