Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

When my Dad sneezes, the birds take flight
Across the summer gardens. The beetles
Hurrying through the rain–forest lawn
Kneel for a moment in prayer. The woodlice
Meandering in the musky, mouldering
Wood–stack, bring their feathery footsteps
To a halt, and a quiver of fear
Passes along the petals of the roses.

We know it's coming when he stands quite still,
Calm, as if before a tropical storm.
We wait and raise our eyelids awkwardly,
Like alpinists waiting for an avalanche.
There's a quiet uneasy intake of breath
And we know that nothing can save us now.
Soon comes the thunder–clap, the drums and the cymbals,
In a crescendo of deafening proportions.

As one, the pointed and suburban trees
Prostrate themselves, as flat as pilgrims
Radiating out to face a distant arc
Of imaginary hurricane–blown Meccas.
The pigeons swoon as they swerve for cover,
The blackbirds honk in hectic, apoplectic panic,
In mid–flight the swallows have all died young,
And the sparrows feel quite beyond twittering.

When my Dad sneezes a thousand windows
Break, and the shattered glassy icicles
Fly across the lawns like frozen spears
Slaying several robins as they go.
The middle–aged ladies undressing upstairs,
Clutch quickly at their pale–pink nighties
As the delicate wind whips flimsily round them,
Trying to whisk their egg–white bottoms bare.

When my Dad sneezes the chimneys shudder
And crash like old dud bombs on garden sheds.
The roofs of the houses, rampant as monsters,
Rise in the air like angry parachutes:
The roof of the Robinsons' steps sideways
To the Jones's, as the roof of the Jones's
Crashes in the park, trapping in its wake
Two dogs and some neck–wagging swans
.
When my Dad sneezes the Severn bursts its banks
And Tewkesbury is in trouble again. The water
Rises to the Abbey door, and with a lurch and a stagger
It's off, the great tower wobbling, swaying and floating
Down past Deerhurst, Newnham and Berkeley,
Crashing through the bridges, on out to Lundy,
Bobbing and dipping, riding the grey Atlantic waves,
To sink at last in splendour beyond the Mexique Bay.