The fall

Like a blushing timebomb it parachutes
when its time is up. It is dying already.

Its brittle skin and ice hardened arteries
map a spiral of luminous decay.

This show of futile gallows defiance
should be a warning to all of us

and yet we praise the dissolute beauty
the sang-froid of its gaudy silk waistcoat.

This hostage to gravity has lost its grip.
After the fall, its final ignominy

is to end up as sullen pavement slush
waiting to break a pensioner’s hip.

Semi-shade

 

Happiness is fading as the nearly sun
throws its half-light across the garden.
Invisible pressures form our horizon
like the bars of an open prison.
This seeping greyness will persist for days.
The sun came out briefly. It’s raining now.
We have a word for it – semi-shade.
Many words. it is our Eskimos’ snow.
Our only certainty is ambiguity.
How do we feel? ‘Oh, not bad’, ‘you know’.
Shipping forecasts map our moods –
‘New low moving across Southern Faroes’.
Summer is a friend who promises to visit
so fleeting that we might miss it.