PROTEUS
I shit you not
it was enough to freeze bloody ears
off a mutt turning tricks on Grimsby dock,
snow were that high
approaching Sherwood Forest.
We took doggy bags and flasks
of hot water to sustain us.
A small but friendly snow ball fight
between a few friends
erupted into a full scale riot involving 200+
officers armed with riot shields
and using barricades
which went on for a couple of hours.
Happy days.
A fox nebbed out of blue shadow,
stuck her neck out,
disappeared into the depth of trees
with a bag of maxpax
between immaculate teeth.
I can still hear her laughing
thirty years ago.
*Steve Woodward, http://www.policecaruk.com/MinersStrikeMemories/MinersStrikeMemories.html
Here they come,
across the frost furred fields
like the workers – men
in donkey jackets patched
with cut off legs
of jeans that look like holes
through which the last
remaining jigsaw of the sky
is falling – crows,
all over the place, hedged in
by bench-tiered evergreens,
not a remarkable face
among them, turning
the earth and noting nothing
of value for none of them.
Then one makes a move,
draws its wings
up like cold knees
before last ashes riddled
to reveal the sunken heat,
and suddenly they’re all at it:
pumping the air
with swimming kicks like kids
thrown in at the deep end
on a first lesson,
screaming like asses.
Chaff, freed of its seed,
descending in reverse
into a fine blue tilth:
the waste of space.
Excellent, both. I love the apparent insouciance that belies the punch being packed of the first & the crows in donkey jackets of the second!
ReplyDeleteThanks very much, Dick - really appreciate that coming from a poet as skilled as yourself.
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