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Howard Wright

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Scene of the crime

When an off-roadster changes down like a joyrider
Losing touch, and a tractor stops inventing perfect
Geometry and the land forgives because there is no point
In arguing, and the spotter plane becomes a blur,

Braking in middle mid-air, freeze-framed,
Then the barriers have taken hold and a metal slime
Spreads in all directions from the scene of the crime,
Someone on the unsafe side, someone unnamed...

A road, then a district, is cleared, adding hours
To your journey along the tightly-coned diversion around
Deregulated housing poised to overrun the playground
Of plastic surgeons and wooden lawyers.

So, compare the imagined to the real event;
Touch nothing that would otherwise see you suspect.
Give it a wide berth and try to be a tad more circumspect
When you talk of what you saw and where you went.



Marsha Levin - Untitled illustration
Illustration by Marsha Levin


Howard Wright teaches Art History at the University of Ulster. His collection, Usquebaugh, was published by Redbeck Press in 1997.

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