Morning Ghosts / The Woodpecker

Morning Ghosts

The buildings are skeletons, giant

rib cages mouths of

cracked teeth

eyes that regard

the morning’s light

without

brown bristled plants

grown through

their hollows

orange trees

grow from rust

coloured soil that

tumbles with

the wind

glinting, a mound

of tile

fragments blue

and white

used up

wooden

cable

reels

rows and rows some

branches heavy with

the fruit that

in

other places lies

where it

falls

to the sea

the land is

flat

in the west

low

green mountains

wait.

Near Valencia, February 2014

The Woodpecker

Bands of colour wash

the land and

sky

Pale gold slate blue

scrub green grey hewn

and hammered

the red head of

the bird bounces

rising and falling

loping, he goes

from the fence

post to the tree

and then all

across the riven

ground

as if taking a short

stop

at every point he

passes, perhaps

checking

to sniff the peaks in

the air. 

Belt

Belt

One day I asked

about his back

He was one of the

travellers, long

tough, sinewy, a body

of knotted rope

bunched and stretched

beyond its 14 years

Long raised lines ran

pale along it, bared

in the thin sun

He told me

they were scars that’s all

I pressed, where from

When I was younger

I got the belt

and

he made a movement

with his arm

A wind caught the

backs of my legs

I didn’t

ask anything else

He covered himself

picked up the ball

We’d smoked together

a few times

I suppose I thought I was

escaping from

something

The Dog Dreams

The dog dreams

He dreams of running 

Deep breaths etch

the shape of ribs.

Days’ shape is light, dark

fitting sleep between

thin membranous

remembering skin

stretched

over bones.

I saw the moon. The old

pockmarked scratched moon, cold

and milky with cloud, like a blind eye

mine ached and I saw it

was the sun, the day’s pallid body

crept over me and touched my face

and left quivering

my ribs at its passing.

The sky’s bone pale

comes and goes, dust

of days bones ground up and hanging

in the light

the cold circle sits

at the end of the long tunnel

like staring down a well

if such things were

The dog thumps over

the ground racing rabbits

from rummaging grass

Fur stuck with burrs.

And the world is green and brown

and blue and gold and the world is

and the stars are.

In the night’s almost quiet shapes

of leaves like jackals heads and dead

forms squeeze between the sheets

old food in teeth, drunk

with lethargy and the brain’s low

humming gloom

the thought you wake

with you can’t shift

it hangs about you like booze’s reek

and makes your bones to speak.

The old bones and new bones and

the bones in the ground

and the bones of star

and sun and tree and

animal and the bone

of the ear and of the brain and eye.

The dog dreams

The blackberries this year were bigger

and the dog dreams.

He dreams of running.

The Wren / Swarf

The Wren 

What is in its beak

is bigger than

it.

Swarf 

The first time
with the adhesive
it got everywhere
its fragrant tar clagging
fingers, leaving taps
covered with thick smears
a grubby handprint on
the arm of the sofa,
on the newly painted wall.

So now we put on surgical-
looking gloves before we start, only
to find the glue has formed
a skin in its tub which must
be removed
like off old jam, the news
that his cousin has been
found
in t-shirt and pants sat
on the stairs half way down
it would seem, by his sister and brother-
in law who climbed over the fence
passed on
incidental, in a conversation
about the floor.

Shows me the notch he has
cut to fit round the
edge of the skirting,
folding and squeezing his hand into
the glove, almost tearing with his
thick fingers points out casually
that after his brother
from those two sisters three
of the five now remain.

Strange
that more didn’t come from the
huge and struggling clan
of thirteen Welshmen
from whom his Dad was chosen
to come to London and
get an education
but then again,
infancy alone took almost half.

Outside, rain
patters on the roof
they built over
the side passage
which keeps the tools and the paint
and the washing dry in winter.

We measure the boards, saw
them on the bench
lay them in the brown glue
like a ploughed field, patterned
by the trowels’ grooves.

We have never been farmers
mostly teachers, engineers, drivers
shopkeepers, milkmen, miners
and one politician
a peaceful man sent to prison.

The doors will need to be taken off
planed, re-hung, new holes
drilled in the hinges.

Once we made a recording
just Gran talking
we listened
but all we found was distant
muffled sound when we
took it down, wiped, from the shelf.

This we do.
The wood shaves off in curls that
float a little as they fall.

The low sawdust light shows them
for a second
transparent, glowing.

The Kingfisher / The Rabbit

The  Kingfisher

You never see the kingfisher.

You only see something that

could not be

anything else

The Rabbit

Once we found a rabbit a fox

had got and bellysplit

open and torn

guts coming out we brought it home

in a dustpan held it

careful and quivering its eye

was open still whirling madly then

still looking up

underneath its blood-

stuck fur its heart beat still

like a frog’s throat

then stopped.

Later, we found a dead rabbit.

We laid it on a spot we knew

and left

we came back to the place

it had been

taken