Poetic exchange on the Regent’s Canal

 

“Look a’ that,” the builder urged his mate,

pointing at two tiny moorhen chicks

negotiating pebbles

on their straggly legs

– “larke spiders.”

 

I liked his style.

 

“A poet called them ‘feathered balls of soot’,”

I volunteered.

He didn’t seem impressed:

“You fro’ the Narth?”

was all he said.

 

But turning away

he told his mate,

“’Feathered balls o’ soot’,

 

I like that.”

 

 

Patina

 

See these steps,

surviving the latest upgrade to the house,

worn hollow in the middle:

people still trudge up them with shopping,

bump wheelie cases, coax children.

 

Do they feel what once was:

the absence that contains a century’s detritus,

the warmth of many soles before them,

retained in their dusty emptiness?

 

And as history might research the treads of feet

that ever climbed the stairs,

and science track their DNA and every trace,

so those people in our lives who touched us,

never really leave,

 

even if they drop off Christmas lists,

even when our own hard disks are wiped,

even rogue prions and decay of identity itself

 

can never quite erase

the patina of our connectedness.

 

 

Galilees of the heart

 

Before the clutter and clatter of now,

before the claims of the city,

tangle of alleyways, lure of avenues,

before silting up from veins to arteries

 

was the pure idea

 

before purpose was blunted by calculus,

before poetry was muddied by interpretation,

before layer was laid upon layer,

stones tumbling under the freight

of time. Before

I forget the bones

of the story, remind me

of the source, return

me to the shore.

 

There dare me trace it back,

lull me, lake, in the heart’s rhythms,

hills, still the mind’s muttering –

 

until I can divine

the moment

when the water turns to wine.