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

Along the rough lane leading down to the pond
the grass is on fire with sunset, the sky
slashed with streaks of primary and paint-box colours,
a chaotic fleece shot through with lightning, thunder,
solar winds and noctilucent clouds
where the fat man’s mouth lost in its many chins
has swallowed his voice and is choking on it.
His foot falters over the last step and he jolts
into emptiness, falls like a plane’s floor
suddenly dropping away into the sky’s hollow,
passengers’ heads and all the carry-on baggage hitting
the ceiling, tearing their minds apart
in earth and sky, shattering

the quiet world of plants as they lean forwards
attentively, sensing the oscillations of air
as a sound wave passes, the ripples of greenhouse gas
gusting out of our mouths as we confide in them
and the magnetic strip of our nearness slotting in
like a credit card …

A boy’s head is emerging from the rose hedge
wearing its straggly branches like a crown of thorns
as he hastens off to buy yardages of time like cloth,
and books to plug the gaps on his library shelves,
assuaging his horror of emptiness …

But the universe – white dwarfs and supernova, planets,
paths, grass, stars and rabbit-droppings,
the twisted boles of elms lumpy and warted, the smoke
of bonfires or the burnt pizza you left in the oven
overnight, the small pond’s water-lilies
hiding the orange lights of carp not yet extinguished
by the heron’s throat – is mostly space, all the grades
of solidity largely a matter of how easily their contained
particles can jump about, the difference between
slim and obese children, crowded or uncrowded together,
skipping across the hardness of a playground

while you sit almost asleep picking the sores of regret
to stop them healing. After this nano-instant – now –
nothing is certain.