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Julia Casterton

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Catkins

I should have waited to see how these happened:
thin green wriggling legs in the air
that seem to say ‘Ignore us.
Were nothing really. We’ve only come
to make a haze at the corners of your eyes.’

Only! I want to know where their desire comes from,
hard as ambition, ballistic, straight pistol shots
of spring, that they hide by acting like fidgety invalids.
If I’d sat by the tree four evenings
would I have seen them coming?
Or is there always a midnight column

to hide them, so when I look up and feel them
shimmering “We were already always here”,
the damage is done (shimmer), hard light filtered
(shimmer shimmer), sun under my feet,
the pavement alive,
kids on bikes glowing cruising round the estates,

(shimmer shimmy). Am I alive? “Yes”, they say,
“this is easy. We feel ourselves about to happen
and we say let it come down.
It’s all a bit of a blur.
The thrill of that
is what we came here for”.

 

Page(s) 36

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