Breakfast

Eating his breakfast
alone, young Andrew sits
and sings a shanty as he eats.
Shall we look and listen as he munches,

tears the air around
with Music of the Night?
Divisive toast and Marmite
- cut with sound!

No Star ever sang out from the heart
more truly,
or chorus-singer flowed with sound
so thrilling.

No blackbird called for light-on-earth
so earnest,
or wave crashed out from sea-on-rock,
calamitous.

Does it matter what he sings?
- of love or battles,
sorrow, loss or pain?
Does it matter?

Oh yes, it matters as long
as hearts jump glory in that song;
sincerity, exuberance, no care:
rare.

Hubbub

Noise inside this room is loud:
no voice seems ever quite as bold as Andrew,
my autistic son
- his voice is missing here.

He can sing – louder than a horn –
as long as loved ones standing near
listen to his rising tone,
resonate a chest, a core

and now I walk out through a door
to stand in rain, suck the breeze
and clock a waving tree;
beat my beating heart.

Phew

The moon’s a cube tonight
- so square I drop back in my
house – terrified by corner, angle!

I have another look outside,
pulling back my floral nets -
thank God the corners have revolved
- the moon become parallelogram,
a few new stars chipped off!

And, as the moon descends,
it turns and squashes
back into that perfect O
I used to know
and sinks, a lonely tear,
down into a slowly rising sea.

King

Here’s a hand from the right side
holding a tangle of cotton.

Finger and thumb from the left side
(turning before the wind catches)
take up the end of a blue one
and master it into the sun.

The sky of sixty nine

look up at a screen,
and the black and white sparkle:
Armstrong strides the moon.

On a train

it’s only when
another tunnel comes
that darkness falls
and her old face
reflects back in
the window pane
- smiles again.

When foreheads meet,
that moment’s when
she integrates
her eyes and ears,
mouth and nose;
blesses back
her misty angel soul.

Slovakia in Winter

‘Buy my perfume – BOSS – boss?’
asks a dapper at the station
- graffiti hits on every wall
(graffiti reaching carriage windows)
and desolate, slate-grey, the journey
out from the city, smoke hard as nails
until the ground rises and fields

heave in view and the river we follow
twinkles and sparkles, turns with our train,
and the mist in the valley
climbs to the hills with a first glimpse of snow
and the far distant mountains flume out a welcome,
tinkle my heartstrings in hopefulness,
amber and russet and black and then go.