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

tarmac paths fissured and patched    glass
shattered    plane tree leaves green-glow
august sun    wrecked

pushchair kneeling in nettles

backs of households    soft

dog turd on the paths verge    a swift
whiff of it knifes
through warm air    windows
doomed wooden with boards    distant

dog-barks    a dog-growl close
behind a creosote-drenched fence    bent
and rusty bmx six feet
up a scorched cherry tree    black

bent-over nails in an oak’s trunk    blue
polypropylene rope tied
to a brick tangled
in an ancient hawthorn above

a sickly trickle

in an old meadow-ditch amongst
dwellings that one day suddenly were over this

place    slick wet condom    I step
over a rubber ghost of lust I have to come
close to    a solid ghost

of what can’t be stopped from the start
of an animal’s evolution    the hot soft

smell of drying

grass-cuttings and petrol   a once-bright
slide swings and climbing frame chipped
and scraped glints
in the summer-sun’s blade light    a playground
a playground

amongst the enclosed tracts where ways
with names
like Keepers Walk, Shepherds Walk, Thatchers Walk, carry

the feet round these dropped objects    and the body through
this otherside where the wide
car-ways don’t go    where the too

clean in smart shoes would take unreasonable risks

with their presences    where eight year olds of uncertain
ages wander in strangely dangerous
grubby packs    or hurry

alone

as small as tatty rabbits across

the echo
of a meadow foxes watched    passing adults keep

their eyes to the path