Two Poems

My News

Now that the sun has made it over the tops
of the opposite houses,
flaring through the wrecks
of wallflowers and marguerites,
the seeds from giant purple flowers
spiral up over the graves
of the chrysanthemums,
one-winged sycamore planes
revolve on their axes
down through the air.

A slight breeze knocks the bell heather.
Sun wobbles in the bird mirror.
The green shed is humming.
The bare red twigs
on the upper branches of the peach tree
flick on as an electric charge hits them.
Rose brambles glisten.
The telephone wires
shoot parallel silver bullets into the blue.
How are things with you?

Artist

She’s working on a ‘found bed’,
a door panel or workbench,
bound with material like an ironing board.
She runs her hand over
its virgin flatness: not a ripple
disturbs the surface of the sheet
where the bridal couple
have been tucked to extinction.
She stands back in satisfaction,
shivering slightly in the unheated studio.

Old suitcases and games,
wardrobes and window frames
crowd round the narrow bed
teetering on its tripod.
She’ll be out again tonight,
cruising the skips with her shopping trolley.
Every day the piles of junk grow higher,
the floor space smaller.
Her long-term project is a studio piece
whose completion requires her absence.