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Sport 40: 2012
Poet Hard at Work
Poet Hard at Work
Down the road there’s an orchard no one
cares for much, although
someone once left a ladder out
and a few prunings still lie there, tumbled about.
That’s where I stop when I go off on the bike.
I peer through to see what
among the trees degged with lichen
might be happening. And there it is—
the first blossom, a plum.
This needs a patch of blue behind it
and all I’ve got for now is grey
so I watch, and while I do
a line of cars passes.
Away they go to the last one
leaving behind something which grows and becomes
silence—and a cry: a lamb!
Chips of gravel lie this way and that
the way tyres flung them
into the weeds all reaching and shining and showing
every one of them a someone
and here am I—
not anyone or anywhere
among small stones and grass
waiting for a cloud to pass.