Friday, 20 December 2019

ONE AGAINST THE CLOCK MORNING SCRAMBLE


A poem about being connected, about how every action provokes another.
The poem became clearer as I wrote it. I had the first two lines and then the next two until I had the rough shape of the poem on the page. Sometimes you don't know what the poem wants to say until you've got it all down. It's important to listen and give it time to say all it needs to.

She was a sailor
who had sailed to the moon,
or at least the equivalent distance,
ploughing a path, turbulent or smooth,
between two fixed points
and back again as the globe turned
and the galaxy described a complex figure
around a super massive black hole.

She was more concerned
with the intricacies of internal combustion,
the sequence of timed explosions of pressurised diesel,
that shoved one piston down
and another up to complete the cycle,
excreting, almost as an after thought,
tons of carbon dioxide and particulates
to contribute what they could to melting the icecaps,
altering the climate and promoting
asthma in random people around the globe.

One against the clock morning scramble,
her retirement made the news,
as I searched for my inhaler.


It was not difficult to write but it took time to find the poem's shape. It feels half completed. I need to put it away for a while and come back to it.

A friend sent me a Jamie Stillway cd this week and what a treat it was. 
Enjoy.

Until next time.

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