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Sam Smith

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Untitled

Among fence weeds, below the louder flower-
rattle of wing buzz, with exo-skeletal
vibrations, insects are talking one to another.
A poison-killed mole has its poignant
pink hands spread upon its velvet chest.

This day of white cloud and showers has
a clear blue light squeezed between sky and
land. In this strange normality - new-mown
smell of grass-sap - an old man with a
coxcomb of grey hair, is dragging his age
and his illness around with him.

Sparrows hop and drop from the low shrub hedge
around the guardhouse garden. Longtailed tits fall
slantwise. like flakes of light, from fir branch to
dark fir branch. In among this screen of trees one grey
pigeon steps sideways along a branch. A songthrush
runs beakdown across the guardhouse lawn, pronged
comes to a halt. The pigeon cracks into flight.

 

First published in River King Poetry Supplement (USA)

Page(s) 10

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