Three poems recently shared via Black Bough Poetry’s @Toptweettuesday on Twitter.
If you enjoy reading this, I also recently had some other poems published by Ink Sweat & Tears and Briefly Write – click the links to view. If you’re really, really interested, even more can be found in the Published Elsewhere page on this very site…

Street sailing

This morning, houses are brick-built 
boats, windows flashing hope back 
into the sky, tower blocks moored 
liners, pavements concrete seas, 
pedestrians, shoe-sailors, plotting
routes to circumvent the doldrums, 
courses set for the islands of possibility, 
a rumour, overheard, at break of day.

Come evening, urban mariners return, 
streets harbour bulky cargoes, 
pallets laden down with stress, disquiet, 
frustration – anxious to be unloaded 
with the tide, stowed behind thick 
wooden doors, or beachcombed cardboard 
covers, closed now against the night, before 
tomorrow’s voyages must get underway. 

Wall versus Tree

Struggling to flash
a not quite rainbow 
smile, (spray-painted 
years after going up),
onto its crumpled face,
old wall juts out 
– a random tooth,
sprung from gummy soil,
beside an abandoned railway line
– seems to speak of loss and gain, 
while a grasping oak’s snake roots, 
bones exposed, 
slowly tear the bricks apart,
the tree lives, but is so severely pollarded, 
bark stripped, sap bled, 
it might be said 
to welcome death itself.

The next service is due

Two minutes to endure
on platform one,
full complement
of genuflecting faces,
quietly fix
on beacon screens, 
as station cat slips 
through legs, 
contemplating
starlings,
a clamouring, 
with purple flashes,
before the main act 
takes the stage, a blue rust 
yolk yellow sequence, yowls in, 
extending urgent brake-squeal invitations, 
doors part, with pneumatic exhalations, 
all rise, 
doors close,
– silence rushes back.