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

Today, I am a pseudo-other.
That is,
I’m not at all sure
that I should even be here.
For example, I missed a phone call
by split-seconds. All the way home I saw
words on backs of vans,
hints in tea-leaves.

Sadly, I gather, I’m cross-living. Perhaps I’m in your shoes.
You could be in mine, or elsewhere; I don’t think we can cohabit.

I expect
I zipped across, wrongly, by some
slipstream trick in a bad decision,
inheriting the most proximal future
and bursting out, like new
shoots at a growing point.

Last week, I felt my bones click into place each morning
as audible ticks in boxes to say
I’m charting well according to
the eager workings out of many
winged men by a great unfurled map, whose creased
coordinates include words like ‘twenty
-two and a half’ and ‘conversation
had with mother’ or ‘endured exhibition
of MDF doors’.

Also, I remember spotting a long unseen friend across
the street, and a quilted old-style handbag
in just the right shade,
when out to buy hubcaps. I recall
feeling at home with the sun drenching
my upturned face, patio peach tea
and a giggly sense that leaving really was
best for all concerned.

This week is different, dire.
Your life pinches my toes. There have been
many mishaps, property papers, out-kiltered hand-signals,
full deaf hours of lost advice,
and birthday cards, belated.

Trying to mix myself
cake-like into a different life cannot be
the sole activity of myself. Logic requires
that we all must switch at once.
(This must cause more panic in the lofty offices
than can be imagined, cuing
hefty paperwork,
clues to trajectories best re-routed, whispers
in the trees, the resurfacing
of long-lost treasures in arrow lines; sweets on the floor.)

Next week when I’m back – if I am – I shall never be
too sure of being
myself,
instead assuming
a good humoured policy of Pascalian wager.
I shall think nothing of wearing odd socks. I shall learn tea-leaf.