A short poetry post, to end my blogging year with.

Two short imagist poems recently shared via @toptweettuesday on Twitter. Alongside a wintry Crystal Palace Park, replete with Penge Nessy.

I had planned a reading year in review, but am frantically trying to finish Middlemarch, so that’ll become post one of 2023. In the meantime, hope you enjoy these contrasting year’s end poems.

The week before midwinter

Thick ice, on the road outside the school, 
parents hold children close, navigating narrow Lambeth 
pavements, slick with marbled stretches, smoothed by all 
the morning feet, passing as they head towards the gate, 
tight playground become ice rink, patchy, scattered 
with hopeful handfuls of brown salt and no one wants 
to wait too long for teachers to collect their classes 
and get indoors, before heading off again, slipping slightly
on the treachery of the street, hands ready to grab a rail or fence, 
while not twenty minutes down the road, walkways approaching
Dulwich College, run clear, fully gritted, firm enough for dancing 
steps, to swish away beyond tall fences, into the sweep of empty,
frosted playing fields, idling off towards the ruddy gothic central hall, 
trailing an unspoken question, who’s really paying for all this?

Space Station Dahlia

That’s no moon, but life-star, turning like 
a planet towards the sun, as other bodies 
within its orbit fade, casualties of autumn 
gravity, unlike this yellow-orange face, still 
glowing, petalled rows, organic solar panels, 
drawing in the light, along with insect traders, 
landed in the docking bay to gather up the goods, 
before blasting off (floral tractor-beam disabled), 
back to the outer realms, of Ruskin Park. 

Inspired in part by reading Matthew MC Smith’s
excellent, treasure filled The Keeper of Aeons.