
David E Anson muddypoetry
NEW WORK
the bonfire
I have idled away the summer
growing fat and awkward.
Wilted garlands of gladioli
and rotting stocks
have thatched a damp lid on my head;
August’s excreta is piled here.
The children don’t come near me;
if the wind is right, there is a faint stink.
But one day,
the flame will come
to set my soul on fire
and cream smoke will billow
like a temple offering.
Deep within white heat will churn
sparks will fly
and I will be alive once more,
one more time
until nothing,
as if I never was
as if I had never even been.

pine tree in the building site
Late, afternoon; gauze of blue catches
heavy thatch of Scots pine, green and sharp feathered.
Far below its stately sight, rag of frayed root
unearthed, up-ended, left, forgotten here
in the shadowed site. Digger tracks, muddy ruts,
trenches gape, baring clay teeth,
a rash of signs shout their hazards on the gate.
Stirrings of yellow warmth lift then settle the cones
that nest precariously.
The bubble and chatchatchat of birds,
the sweet sip and click of song swells the evening
and clouds the pine in ancient sound.
Morning will bring a different rhythm
and jar the air with wrench and clang and jud
of metal fist
and this pine will stand it all the more.

teenage dreams on the funicular
Evening seeps in like blood on a pillow
grey, pebble-dashed, slashes of green and carbon brown.
Street lights come on
allatonce
a string of bobbing yellow
lamppost to lamppost
across the river squares of white shut off by curtains drawn
and the shape of supper being made.
Your perfume, paper-thin on the winter air
and the Severn
winding its dank
burrow into
the night.
A black crow, hardly there at all, pulls at something fleshy in the gutter,
flaps like rust from the creak and rattle of the last carriage
descending
to
‘Low
Town’.
A screeching clank somewhere below.
This is the first handrail, beginning the awkward ascent
coiling up and up to some grey-haired future.
I grew-up here, spent my Friday nights here,
dormant.

the bat
Between light and dark
a shading
that turns from silver to deepest indigo
Hangs over the dome.
The fir tree, tall and drooping heavy arms
is pure black night against his blue.
Into the scene he comes.
Small, insignificant, hidden by day
In deeply webbed rafters
or curling bows of wrinkled bark;
A world on its head:
neatly clipped green sky,
foxgloves and flag iris
that hang like stalactites.
His moment,
lit up by a clutch of tentative stars;
he makes his entrance
on the finest of wings,
a sci-Fi skin stretching from fingertip to heel,
appearing from the wings,
disappearing into the auditorium of twilight,
darting up to the gloaming of the gods.
We watch from inside,
the lamps off, windows open to the dusk,
searching his speed
straining to see,
straining to just make out his shape
in the near darkness.