Poem (Swindon, 25 February 2019)

The dipping sun behind those skinny trees, 

the trees I came through just now, when I found 

the hill all gone in shadow, just the one

last copper shoulder where the ridge swings round;

I ran like crazy into this plot of sun

    and fell upon my knees

in wintry tussocks, streaks of green and buff.

And that's it gone, but still the grass is dry

in this unwonted, warmed-up February,

though evening dew, night frost, come soon enough.

“All the live murmur of a summer's day”...

Indeed, one bumblebee sailed in and out

of the hedgerow's tracery; no leaves as yet,

nor flowers, except near the Meads roundabout

the purple lines of crocus loosely set

     along Great Western Way

bathe in false summer, Mediterranean spring...

the lemon mahonia in business parks,

the thin-twigged winter cherry that always marks

warm hours with a rosier smattering.

The strollers and their dogs are on the hill,

where three weeks past, on snow, toboggans ran;

the girls now pushing pushchairs, and the boys

flitting in furtive bands, from which you can

smell weed emitting, low laughter and noise.

      Everyone's here to chill,

in the last rays of a half-term afternoon;

the swings and slides full of the children's cries

and yellow alder catkins and spilled fries

on walkways, which the lights will shine on soon.

And on the tarmac autumn leaves lie flattened

by many feet, so crushed the grit shows through;

these leaves becoming spectral, mere remains

of form and fibre; though their shapes stay true

no urgency of sap burns in their veins --

         and yet this faded, patterned

carpet makes the shade of homeward glow,

so tranquil and so open is this dark.

And still, threading Shaw Ridge to Lydiard Park,

comes many a runner from the homes below,

like martins skimming past you in a lane,

just podcasts on the air, you watch them go

on swoosh heels making distance in a blink,

acting a dream of flight from life so slow

its thoughts themselves hardly aspire to think

       in any fresher strain

but bear the family and pay the bills --

while these consume and fling aside the maps,

break through the ring-roads and by dawn perhaps

stand free and shivering on the Cumnor hills?

No, runners, for they call you to your homes!

Panting on footways through the winter trees

above the pipework laid by Wales and West,

where gas from Russian tundra, Nordic seas,

flows into regulated banks, expressed

         in soft erupting flames,

hot water coming on reliably --

let's go, before the dusk raises a wind on

the gloomy terraces of Even Swindon,

we can still dive in the shower before tea.

[A poem begun in Swindon in February 2019, finally completed a couple of months ago.]