The fur-lined malefactor fed a fortnight
On lettuce carrots peas,
Slyly keeping news from friends below.
Laden gun half-aimed, I stalked:
That gorging salad-engine’s tender paws
Which sensed the weight of lead shot in my pocket,
And soft-footed off before I reached the hedge.
My shadow half-close,
Approaching blackout had low odds
On lead-slug hitting his well-padded neck.
It never did
Though if that produce had been all
Between us and hunger
The senses would have sharpened
And my gun been God Almighty.
MOTH
Drawn by the white glitter of a lamp
A slick-winged moth got in
My midnight room and ran quick
Around the switches of a radio.
Antennae searched the compact powerpacks
And built-in aerials, feet on metal paused
At METER-SELECT, MINIMUM-MAX
TUNER, VOLUME, TONE
Licked up shortwave stations onto neat
Click-buttons with precision feet.
Unable to forego the next examination
My own small private moth seemed all
Transistor-drunk on fellow-feeling,
A voluptuous discovery pulled
From some far bigger life.
A thin and minuscule antenna
Felt memory backtuning as it crawled
Familiar mechanism, remembering an instrument
Once cherished,
Forgotten but loved for old times’ sake.
I switched the wireless on, and the moth
To prove its better senses
Mocked me with open wings and circled the light,
Making its own theatre, which outran all music.
FISHES
Fishes never change their habits:
A million years seem like a day
As far as fishes’ habits go.
Beware of those who change them half as fast
Like people every year or so
So fast you cannot find
A firm limb or settled eye.
The constancy of fishes is unique.
They multiply but keep their habits
In deep and solitary state;
Feel unique and all alone
Not being touched and hardly touching
Even to keep the species spreading –
Unique is never-changing habits.
Fishes are flexible and fit the water,
And though continually moving
Never change their habits.
THISTLES
Thistles grow in spite of flowers,
Brittle taproots drawing succour till the autumn.
Seeds flop from the hedge
And at puberty suck their fill by beans and carrots.
Entrenching blade hacks soil,
And fingers under thistle-spikes grip,
And easily out it’s tossed to the sun’s bake.
A dry and useless thistle pricks –
Fingers gather and inflate with pus:
For weeks the memory of pain.
RELEASE
Flowers wilt, leaves feloniously snatched,
Birds sucked away — autumn happens.
Frenetic bluebottles saw the air.
Blackberries scratch with poison.
Love is taken before knowing the mistake.
The last thief grins
At the look of life.
There are many, so who cares?
The trap is a loaded crossbow,
Ratchet-pulley sinewed back
From birth and set in wait.
None walk upright from the bolt’s release.
LEFT HANDED
The left hand guards my life.
I use. It uses. Sinister
Alliances shape plans.
Left hand is fed by the heart
Strategically engined
Between brain and fingers,
Sometimes filtering intelligence.
The left eye is in line with hand
And pen. The left lung
Rotted when I tried the right:
Lesson one was spitting blood.
Vulnerable left side lives in harmony
And liberates the rules,
Rides monsters who fear to eat themselves,
So do not bite.
NEW MOON
Since men have waved flags on her
Classified geology with peacock colours
Sent cameras probing every angle
The moon has turned lesbian;
Shows brighter now in her woman hunger
Goes with purpose to her lover
In the Milky Way, nothing more from earth
Yet better by far than shining palely
A mirror for courtiers to gawp at –
And that stricken poet who ached
In her unrequiting love but now is free.
OPHELIA
When Ophelia lay a finger on the water
The cold and shallow brook scorched flesh.
She pulled it back.
The fire was love.
She was forget-me-not’s daughter,
Each eye a pond of flowers.
She climbed the arching cliff
Where water sent its clouds of salt,
Luminous across the sun.
The nunnery was found:
No one saw her body spin.
A lunar sea-change sent it cleanly in.
ALIOTH THE BIGOT
A bigot walks fast.
Get out of the way
Or walk faster.
He walked faster too
Veered right
To evade me.
I increased my rate
Hinging left to avoid
The fire in his eyes.
Collisionable material
Should not promenade
On the same street.
We muttered sorry
Then went on
More speedily than ever.
CHANGING COURSE
Down the slope to the horizon
Fix the black-dot sun before departure.
When the day sets at the storm’s end
Far along the moonbeams that flow in,
Shut the barometer, hang the watch away
Lay the sextant in its box.