Snow

Down it loosens from the sky
along the trees and city blocks,
trampled on by squeaking feet
from 6 o’clock to 6 o’clock.

It gets inside the downfall pipes
and open upward mouths and eyes;
dropping through uncertainties
on certain hats and city types,
whitening our blackened streets,
changing an indifferent world.

The snowman’s little smile is curled
because he knows he’ll never cling
to a billion crazy snowflakes, each,
uniquely fashioned - everything.

Daisy Cow

I had a moonlit dream
and asked myself if I’d be better
born a human - or a cow -
as if I could, like, choose my form:

to be honest I dunno
whether to become huge and simple, eat grass
24/7 - or bang on and on about the mortgage,
pension, kiddies, final blow.

All in all, today
I lean towards a munching low
and moo into my future,
knowing what’s of note;
a meadow, calves and parlors,
sun and quiet moon.

Ta

For seven years I wrote a diary
nightly, asking ‘What’s my learning!?
‘My little contribution?
“A highlight from today’

in blue workbooks; a kind of romance
from days with tiny pieces, drawn
from wells, lively offerings,
brighter moments dawn to dawn.

It would be easy to get cynical;
say it’s weird that a younger ‘me’ believed
it important to catch those little fish
from pools of curled anemones,
urchins, delicate algae, crabs:
but No I say Hello and Thanks.

Old Tony

He likes to rabbit on, old Tony, giving all
and sundry gobfuls, earfuls, chatter
box, old Tony can’t half natter, talks
for England, verbal diarrhea.

Does it matter that he throws his words
out willy-nilly? Aren’t they just like seeds
or skimming stones or pips or dandelion clocks,
hoping one might stick like chucking pasta at a roof?

And Sigmund Freud, he knew
that smaller words will hold you;
id or ego,
if but try or is how no
just now so
me and
you.

Shy Chris

He walks in a bubble
- slow - or at the double
he keeps out of trouble,
grows a little stubble

and, as far as I can tell,
(when I chatted to shy Chris today)
every bubble’s shiny, small,
contained and neat and tidy

and so we talk, breathe out,
trying to expand our film;
try to merge a personal bliss
or hell before young Cupid’s dart
(or Death’s old rusty axe) – flies
and we bulge a little, weep a little; burst.

In a restaurant,

it’s business we’re talking;
competitive advantage
cost cutting, numbers,
developing niche

and we get straight into it;
where to put people,
strength in our strategy,
huge hairy targets.

‘How’s Andrew?’ he asks me
(they’d met at a social)
and a lump in my throat rises up from down deep
and it’s only when eyes wet and lips start a-quivering
that we soften our truthfulness;
start to do business.

Despite Andrew’s love,

it might seem boring
to recycle the same
nursery rhymes every day
in this order – Three Pigs, Three
Bears, Billy Goats Gruff, Jack and the Beanstalk;
a wolf, the porridge, the chair and the little bed,
the bridge and the troll and a repeatedly thudding axe

and when I’m asked
again, again, it’s hard
to keep it up - muster and talk
through the same old tale; until he eventually
gets a charmed look, away
and freshly lost in a dream
of significant story.