When the shower’s dry

how lucky are you
to switch on a first pulse
of water, feel cold energy hit your
hand, your arm, withdrawing back to shivery
wintry air and fiddle with
dials and switches until
the spray warms up

enough to step into
a new stream of heat
and tingling jets hitting your
thighs, your chest, your face. To wash without
soap; no bubbles or lather or
flannel or effort or work;
how lucky are you?

One banana, two banana

I hope
when I go
‘banana’ you
know there’s no
fruit there, don’t you,
only a few dots on a page
in black and white. So whose
banana is it then, the one we are
seeing and tasting? And why a banana,
considering all the other fruit we both know
about and all the other words we’re sharing here?
Some even have b’s and a’s and n’s but, despite that,
who decides whether your banana’s voluptuous and perfectly
yellow and curved slightly, zipped up, and/or marginally over-ripe?

Face value

When I look at the face
of a clock, it seems pretty
simple – all about hands
washing a face - time and time again

but I know, behind the numbers,
a faithful engineer has expressed
in manifold tiny detail
torque and cogs, design and energy

(worked loads out) and, even when features
seem fine on the outside, lots
of whirring’s going on behind scenes
- winding up, turning and ticking along -
crafted by skilful hands;
whenever I look into a face.