Sport 25: Spring 2000

—the word as a member of the local community

Poems are small villages occupied by words.

Tyger is, by the sound of it, a local cat,

Immortal a priest dying of cirrhosis.

Fearful is a housewife whose husband ignores her.
She never likes to leave the house.

Symmetry is her partner. His body is sculptured from
working out at the gym. He is notoriously unfaithful.

Of and Or are sisters. One forms dependent relation-
ships. The other can never seem to make up her mind.

What is a schoolteacher
who always has an answer to everything.

Hand props up the local bar.

In is the publican. She is buxom and blonde.

Mr Burning is a fireman, a hero during the war.
He drives an ice-cream van on weekends.

Bright is his deputy who is dull.

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The is the milkman who always seems
to show up everywhere.

Thy is his father who is retired
but still does the odd delivery.

Frame is a builder. He has played prop
for the local rugby team ever since he was a boy.

Forests is the gardener who knows
the names of trees.

Night is a burglar. He lives in an old house
at the far end of town.

Miss Could is a spinster who wonders what might have happened if she had run away with the butcher's son when she was a girl.

Eye is their policeman watching through his window,
round as the moon in the middle of the night

rearranging pencils against the top of his desk

making sure everyone around him
is serving their sentence.