Factory

Their pallor masks them; their stale bread faces.

Those who’ve stood the line for years, windowless
shifts in the sandwich factory; dry cold.
Any flush a kind of betrayal of
some other life waiting without; without
the line; the aching boredom of busy
fingers and nothing new to see.
‘What a way to earn a crust,’ sighs the wight
at my side, everyday without fail.
I smile; stick labels on plastic wedges;
‘dolphin friendly’ for the posh shops,
though it’s all trowelled out of one vat.
I imagine those peeling open
pitiful meals, with only their kindness
to dolphins to nourish them.

Hermits

Hermits don’t dress for dinner;
they’re stoic in barrels
or caves in coves cut off
   at high tide.
Yes, they’re getting thinner
on gulls eggs, grass and cockles;
but doesn’t too much leave us 
   unsatisfied?
The squeeze to end up a winner
hollows one out in the end.
So roll out a barrel by the
   wayside
to mark point of near retreat;
shelter on a wretched day.
   And then tread on;
an inward life’s not complete
without discord and disarray.

Familiar

The witch has gone; the familiar stays

under the step; eyes brass inlaid black,
watching the fearful cast pot into pond;
quite blind to an elemental magic.
For devil will a-wend his shape, they say.
Fools! What doesn’t want to find its way home?
Water born, a warty hide smells that mere
which bore him; by-pass be damned.

Aepyornis maximus

Phyla, limpet-like, linger yet;

live as if their ends were not set

as surely as ebb follows flow.

It will not be the half-dying

of the elm, re-called to leaf.

Aepyornis maximus, I presume;

- extinction –

the elephant bird in the room.

A fear is rising like a fret;

the day is closing like a net.

A dam of splinters set aside

is not enough to stem the wash

of mono-cultural death.

Useless Things

Without the strength to cut a swathe,

we  forage in margins spared the scythe;

all nettles, life and other useless things.

Rooks rise as one, then settle as before

as if we were but rags filled with straw.

Was falling see, and nothing was right;

neither room, spirit or tight-starved heart.

I felt I would fall into nothingness

and see it happen in a slow reel.

There is no rope of words to pull you up

then; makes no odds if you sing, sing, sing -

I wouldn’t crown a bard with anything.

Pain is all things; the least of which, a word;

suffering is silence waiting to be heard.

Caravâna

Rhita Gawr warms himself as best he can,

wrapped up in beards in his caravan

below the icy comb of the lone crib goch;

the car park’s full by 10 o’clock.

This is Caravâna; khanate of the second home.

Squatting; towed; a long square to bless each plot.

Hail the gods of compact storage! Sterile miracle, o chemical toilet!
Convenience incarnate; hook-up for a few quid a night.
Through nameless cwms (whatever they are),
where truculent troglodytes whittle away at their love spoons
in unspeakable towns, the road to glorious sea vistas leads,
   in Caravâna.

Part-time signals

I would not forgo a guiding light

but must, edging towards part-time signals.

Works coned off; adverse camber -

Cars near quickly; gaps are small.

It's a pulse of the mind sears the moment;

the weighing of risk; judgement of distance;

resolution; deft footing of pedals.

How blithely we bear nearness of oblivion;

 how lightly we bear -