2005
1 The day after the day after the summer solstice
The high pressure shower mugging
my razor cut scalp in the way a cactus might jab;
I, in the sun yesterday in the garden,
boring with mutual weed and hoe,
the broken, working earth appreciating my work.;
here, bitten on my right cheek by an irritable chap,
a persistent, adoring horse fly, nipping without hate;
here, a right palm small blister beginning to come.
In the Llwynu store by the wall post box crack,
to buy tomato for my spaghetti brazen rich mélange;
Carlsberg too - no, there were Dutch Lynx there;
the weather bringing enhancement to any cricket pitch.
I beat it back, hanging bags biting palm,
by the half-brick wall, intelligence half-askew
in truth; I open a cold can in refreshing embrace,
waiting there alone, for about half an hour.
I thought, with the warm weather here - must be,
why otherwise would it come into my test matching brain -
of Indian cricket in the heat, thumping ball with willowy bat,
where in absurd reasoning, I was playing, running.
2 Watching the motorists pass by south and north
Two oldish men asked me the way, in the warm afternoon air,
to some unheard of golf course, but I didn’t know where.
I went into the Iceland hygiene to trap a roast chicken
in cling film, tomato, bread, butter, bottle of cider, a chop or two,
hooking a bright, warm spaghetti afternoon, putting it in a net.
I went to the ATM machine. I’m fond of it;
a question or two to test one’s integrity,
then a bunch of clean money,
although it does like to play out-of-order impropriety,
when the thing is being intractable, won’t take care.
I came back to a warm, welcoming home,
hunting poetry, the rhythm the prey, experimenting in rhyme
with the out-of-date mouse, but it works well enough for me;
I think it used to with joy, in a bleak flat winter, yet able to bear
the byte through the layering of the primary Cambridgeshire air.
