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

A leaf bobbed like a float.
First stipple on dusty slabs. Peck
on the cheek, the childish kiss
of rain. Kiss the shining rods of rain.
The lish beat filled. A canvas sky,
slung between buildings, darkened, sagged,
came suddenly unsheeted.

Some ran. Some, what could we do
but stand in the downdrag, thinned,
punched through like zinc?
Hair smeared to the scalp
like trodden grass, we gazed
at the eelback thresh of gutters,
tranced to the bone with rain.

A yellow pickup
hacked into water, shoaled it
rim over rim in blowsy fans,
rode through on throbbing din, got out –
just – on the swash, left us
blasted, heads wide open
like dynamited fish,

shocked into knowing that rain
could build to a bulging cornice
and it would happen: scribbled cracks
in plaster mouthing open, trees
and houses gaping and losing grip,
rampage of sullen water,
cries under the wind.

And now the city’s dazed,
still gingerly balanced, footfast
in pulpy ground, up to its pulse
in trash; but we can walk
on a willowpattern sky, threading
the squares and streets together,
putting the horizons back.

We’ve found our rhythm, dryshod
passacaglia, ordinary present.
We could go shopping. Only
we’ve seen the news, the paper’s here
with photos of cockeyed roofs, woods
broomed down, sprawling cars, a logjam
in North Carolina of drowned sows.

We’ve read some names. Yet we’re baptised,
for reasons we can’t fathom,
into belief in safety, sitting
on the right hand of luck, able
for now to tell our nearly tales,
reprieved; while a fist in a pocket
stays closed on a sprig of guilt.