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URBAN APPARITIONS
Alone in the dark city,
a thin-blood bridge, no walls – don't fall, don't jump.
Low amber lamps – apologetic – outline sickly trees:
their branches – growing downwards –
form force-fields round my dead-leaf seeded route.
This dank dark hole is off the road, emits no sound of life,
has cloying smells of rotting skins,
and tentacles that suck me down.
Blackest gloom, now fearsome sights:
rats devouring rotweillers,
insects strangling squirrels.
Take the venom from my veins
before I too am swallowed.
Uneasy thoughts – starless night
restore my unblurred vision.
John Easton
AFTERMATH
He hears
oystercatchers call over a bare field.
He sees
a bumblebee stuff itself
deep into blue hyacinth;
its striped rear-end sticks out,
like a toddler's nappied bottom.
Yesterday
he walked through his tenement
across shards of glass, nails, splintered wood.
Now – at daybreak –
he touches
moss and grass with naked feet.
Irene Leake
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