tell me my shoes need resoling/ (who doesn’t?). Some crunch in a quiet kind of way/ but others/ spit fierce into traffic or hedgerow/ tiddley-winked. Each day/ while they last/ I keep honing this skill/ till I fancy I’d acorn a gringo from twenty-five paces/ right between his conker-brown eyes/ hear his grunt of amazement/ as spiked cartridges clatter to tarmac. Slomo fall.
Like/ when storms rage/ on East Coast or Windies/ and we track their progression across the Atlantic/ a strom that’s so strong it recasts its own spelling/ and whose possible paths/ multífurcate furrows/ into forecasts no mortal arthritic could fathom/ (weaving his fingers sagaciously inwards/ creaking/ unweaving). No buckle-bone-mant could crack out a truth from such hands/ foretelling that end-times are blowing our way. Sure, those clouds bear big clats of cold rain and fast slurries of winter’s last ebbing/ percussing pedunculate leaves/ and everting umbrellas. But headlines aren’t headlands. What blows in is bathos. At landfall.
Now you notice the system you set to trap rainbows/ that prism you’d taped to your window/ so dusk would yield colours that travelled your wall/ is now silent. And you wonder what motions of sun earth and heaven to blame/ (geodesics were never your strong point). Those waves are still standing/ if barely/ like you/ oak who’s well-versed in the pathos of g-force. And pratfall.