Lying in State

Once the day began, the full
English breakfast well disposed,
all was well, and all was well.
The doors and minds and blinds were closed.

The coaches glided by, a ghost
brushed and curried at every pane.
The pigs, two years before their mast,
policed the park; down Primrose Lane

a masked man with a bag marked Swag
scampered and capered, free at last.
There seemed a lout for every lag;
at each semi-detached a cast

of Nelson or dear Albert stood.
We shouted as the trees went by,
depeopling a laburnum wood.
The dwindling hedgerows filled the eye.

Now for a cuppa holy grail
and biscuit. Down the wet cement
parades of plastic bags, how frail
the castle and the elephant,

seeking lodgement against the cold
whose day is coming. Hear the late
cobblestones crack. Come sing the old
songs: our ladies lie in wait.

Elder Than Springtime

He was the elder. So he had been told.
He felt it, too. So much to take on faith,
But this, not this. He grizzled as he stared
Into the mirror recollecting zilch
Of what made him the elder. And of age,
A twist of this, a week of that, whole years
He called to mind in no detail, except
The colors of the calendars and shapes
There for memorializing the months, like May
Bedecked with buds and always breasts, but none
With heft or veins. A birthday cake of shrubs
And columbines like candles, and the wind
Which did not quite extinguish them, but made
Counting unlikely. In the dark he saw
The eyes of March, a fall of fallen leaves,
But no one younger, elder though he was.

Taken at the Flood

This appeared in Angelic Dynamo.


Later the yard boys dyed the new growth green.
Nobody knew it wasn't grass but ants,
And who were they going to tell? They didn't speak
To other hills, impossibly soigné.
The trees were propped back up, the roots tied down,
The stream was re-recorded and the wind
Instructed not to blow its obligations.
New men arrived. They never guessed a thing.
If told that they had been replacement parts,
They'd have discovered fossils and designed
Evangelists to praise the status quo.
It wasn't said that apples used to taste
Preposterously sweet, that knuckleballs
Danced polkas on their way up to the plate,
Or that the dogs would talk about the day's
Prodigious hunt. The brand-new women wore
The chic fall fashions, still a little damp.