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.
Woken
to the wing-
clatter as a pigeon slid
on the
asphalt roof,
fingers
in your hair
feel out the bump that grew that
dream,
to rub away.
They
revive, raised up
from water like babies, un-
breathing
but alive.
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
tinctless sky sinks
to earth. Four
clear gulls circle
the twigs’ naked nerves.
Mud,
wrappers, leaf-slough,
some bowed-down blades of grass, thin
and
green: ground zero.
From
the crumpled ebb
of the Thames, their sharp wings lift
them
back whence they drift.
Stars
like drops of cold
sweat; the short-haul jets banking
through
Orion’s belt.
Her
first child’s due soon.
The new moon standing calmly.
A woman’s
young smile.
The
midnight fox looks
up, sees nothing in me to
stay
for, and lopes on.
A
sleep-song, cock-stir
in dream is this tit-twitter,
twigs
nippled in bud.
Chance
of gust and ice
beyond mild skies, like one who
smiles,
yet thinks of death.
Soon
the gale arrives
as neither a death nor rage,
as a
wealth of tears.
Electricity
hung on the points of March, runs
out
in April sparks.
Bare
limbs graced with drops,
first she puts on ropes of pearls
then
the old green dress.
A
liquid puzzle
made of springing trees outside
by morning’s
blown rain.
Drunken
daffodils
fall down wide-eyed, open-mouthed,
three
sheets to the wind.
If
its flag were sewn
of a silk as fine as these,
that
nation could stand.
A
crown of eyes of
fire, of the red-tipped apple
flowers
going to burst.
I
can’t say more now
the light is coming at us
and
our tongue is stunned.
Like
nothing crossed out,
pointing at a total blue,
singing
for dear life.
Flared
yellow, shot pink;
black trunks flex to bear their joy
and
the states make war.
As
if those payloads
were not to be delivered,
by the
approaching
mass
of their beauty
from base to height ignited,
stone
buds burn alive.
Hands
reach for the sun,
the soil breathes grass; all small birds
are
busy building
John Gibbens
