Photograph 2
I pick up bread, Carlsberg, chicken, jasmine tea,
going slow in body and thinking, walking
up Llwynu Road by the Proton,
by the aching steep-gradient bridge,
a thirsty unquenched rest coming up,
in the sweating heat, to Croesonen,
trying to think why I swapped my job for here,
a no-work, annoying concerto for unemployment and no-one;
the first Sunday, now at nearly three, a blazing one,
the rare western heat beating on, on, on,
Photograph 3
I park, after a late lunch of last night’s soup, on
the warm patio where I write, with light aircraft hum
in the encroaching shadow of mid-afternoon Gwent;
to the east, the habitat of chattering train, big bike roar.
Prior to this, however, I had watched with quiet awe
the algae with inhabitants in the bird bowl by the rear,
the variegated leaf and hedge switching on and off in the western light;
without you knowing, birds regroup in the tree, then are gone.
Up there, increasing clouds come in turbulent motion
to stop the runaway sun’s unblocked century,
winning as the temperature and light break
up the patio, garage, a painting now requiring repair;
on the table, an African elephant in dust and Welsh air;
from the magazines, I want to create a photograph resource
a simple card of trouble-free use, colourful play
for the young to go through plain, jungle, mountain, ocean,
in the eastern isolating school by a solitary beach,
where my children once went, a memory half out of reach…
I go in for a brief moment or two, to check
the chicken but, as if in protest, a tree chorus of birds erupt.
I couldn’t help but think they want me to come back;
of course, they might be requesting extra bread from me.
In the house, she is getting eggs on the boil for afternoon tea;
her compost bag of peel and chop vegetarian elegance
relaxes in collapsed, uncouth way in one corner;.
the breeze picks up with a cool fresh peck;
ha, spoke too soon; the breeze picks down now; the birds barge
maybe fighting for a place, playing in mayhem up there,
but don’t seem to come to any major harm,
the dry garden is swamped by a warm equanimity;
one sparrow, the first of the afternoon, hits the tree,
burrows in the foliage, then darts to the bread on
patchy parched grass, but returning to the branch
in the way of a soldier wanting camouflage.
