Month: Aug 2020

Incomprehension

It was never assumed we'd understand
the bewildering things our young hearts dreamed of,
the obscure and fabulous, tales
told like secrets on a star starved night.

Yet eventual clarity, we assumed,
would arrive like children, a mortgage,
the pattern of empty afternoons and death.
We promised ourselves and waited for light.

But still the taunts of the not understood tantalise;
a seagull taking flight, the moon obscured
by your shadow falling above me, our children's cries,
the space between words where silence roars.

Cider

That summer's harvest bellowed apples
bringing the trees almost to their knees,
nearly felled by the pounding weight.

We picked less than one-tenth the crop,
fielding fallers too, their bruised flesh
fizzing with self fermentation.

We quartered the fruit with a crisp slash
and they fell in the bucket like waning moons
falling from an orange harvest sky.

Sharp edged blades and water made the mash
running through our fingers like a fresh spunk,
pouring like cold lava to the press,

oozing green under the screws caress,
ejaculating the last liquid drops,
leaving a stink of dehydrated flesh

we threw in the compost as a slow
boiling began it's self controlling buzz.
Five days after sealing the lid

it began bulging with the weight of gas,
lifting with small sighs of apple breath.
We saw the soft scum, spawn mould,

apple brown, spewling and yeasty.
Siphoning into jars intensified
the ochre muck full of it's own sap.

For weeks it stood quaking in the kitchen
till a late, low sun clarified through it.
By Christmas we would be quaffing it.

And under the buoyant trees, fruit still pounded
with fermentation's pulse, making a cider
soil boozed worms squirm through.

Enquiries at Swanwick Station

'You've been here some years now.
I remember your hair dark,
how you were a younger man'.

'I've become rooted I suppose,
manured in by a steady wage,
that and just a mile from home,
handy to see the children grow,
plant and water shoots
blossomed now away
mulching makeshift gardens of their own.
And you've changed too no doubt,
although I cannot place,
among the many passing here, your face'.

'Well, I only travel
twice a year and sometimes
less than that, according
to the flow of things,
how much I need to get away
and other small dependencies.

So what time do I get to Milton Keynes'?

When the stars fall and more
grey dust is scattered here
among the platform-edge high ferns.