Steve Griffin
Will-O-Wisp
It was easier as a nipper.
Given your first slide rule in senior school
you’d soon work out the sine, cosine or log
with one swift push, and a pull.
Measurement was easy. Just
as you could flip a quick 3 to the foot of a C
or pass back a 2 to an O
so too could you slap the net with the ball,
top right or top left.
And you knew when to keep your trap shut,
understood when all around you
were silently agreed.
But now you’re in a world gone fuzz.
your conscience, soul, mind, whatever
it is against which you judge
Is blurred ground,
rushing away beneath your eyes.
You’re out on the marsh at night.
Everything you thought was solid you
has turned out to be
just a trick of the light.
Steve Griffin works for a regeneration charity in South London. He has had work accepted in London Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, The Rialto and several other magazines.
Page(s) 53
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The