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The war is at the top of the hill just up there in that tree-lined suburb at the edge of the town its expensive flats abandoned and the roadway empty
how tightly the rest of the city draws away from it you never hear it mentioned now and nobody goes there
so why do I stop turn and look towards it my hands full of blue plastic bags weighed down with groceries?
From under the tarmac through cracks that are invisible blue flames flicker as pointed as holly leaves
and just out of sight in the cover of the tree-trunks bare-headed, fair-headed his gun across his stomach a soldier stands braced
The war’s coming closer go home now quietly.
Nailed to a post in the middle of the levels
STATUTORY NOTICE OF PLANNING APPEAL four hundred and fifty houses, a road and PUBLIC AND PRIVATE OPEN SPACES
against the waving heads of the new-grown cereal
º
square-towered church with outward leaning walls, Norman, enlarged in the following centuries
pilgrim crosses behind the chancel arch (faintly scratched lines plated over with glass) and a Latin invocation, narrowly incised
For the soul of my father who died at Agincourt
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deckle-edged notelet - full of underlinings, exclamations, capitals - among a box of postcards, Birthday cards, Get Well cards
letters of condolence, Thank you for the flowers (depicting a pointed Gothic window with tracery)
bits of scrap paper with drafts of replies scrawled over with caret marks, crosses and strike-throughs
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in the dark of a bedroom, two hours before dawn the smooth plastic case of a ticking alarm
reached out for and turned in one hand like a pebble.
from Caret Mark, 2008, Hearing Eye
Some part of me wants to open the train door
I told him about the film where a character opened the door and threw himself out
that was unnecessary, tactless, vicious that was the nasty part of me
I didn’t know he was depressed
some depressed part of me
I was on my way to the wedding, the hairdressers all my not-seen relatives, got up in black, shrinking and tiny
he opened the door and
it was some time before I told anyone the train had gone miles farther on
would he be lying alongside the track?
we set up the search then lots of false leads, wrong interventions people in bright colours and struggles
he always used to say he had friends in the camp and wanted to join them
we knew they were grey-white shadows
yet here in a leather jacket life-sized, kindly a man who says he’s come from there will take us back
he knows my name
I don’t ask him what journey this is
some part of me won’t ask goes willingly.
Two o’clock
among the dull green tablecloths the tall waitress sits down to take her break with a cup of espresso
slim pink sleeves in the dimness luminous her long dark hair fastened loosely at the neck in a loop of blue elastic one strand, as always, falling onto her face
Eating at the other end of the café I sense in a mouthful of tomato and lettuce from the plate that she brought me something like a thread
my tongue skilfully separates it out and my fingers discreetly pull between my lips a long dark hair (unlikely to have come from the shaven-headed chef)
I crumple it up in a paper serviette don’t mention it to anyone
like having that softly falling lock in my mouth
say it was her hair.
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