Silver Branch series

A Winter Rise 

  

The sun burns a butter-pearl disc  

in the smoke-silk fog, 

the trees turn gothic in the veil. 

 

Cold morning, you are 

a cathedral marble face  

turning upwards to the candles. 

 

 

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He rises 

 

Fire-fresh, fangs for toes, 
the diurnal amber raptor 
scatters crow confetti, 
pigeon constellations, 
with stern, solemn, 
brow. 

 

 

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The Birmingham Bull 

 

The bull stands steampunk  
out of a Blake metaphor — 
ribcage drip chain, 
rose-gold-brown bolt 
roaring purple. 

 

Moulded into muscle,  
metal becomes 
smoke-born — 
we search for an 
aluminum pulse under hubs, 
scorched shoulder blades. 

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The Carpenter

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Fine lines, small knife, the skill

Of a carpenter lives in

This wooden nativity set -

Of a baby born amongst trees,

First breaths being stable dust

And fingers soon taught

To carve.

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In the making  

 

The ground is  

apple-sauce-snow, 

mid-pink and honey-leaf are drying. 

The robin; Tudor red armour  

spun sugar delicate, 

sings of crisped veins and glass water. 

He is an unpublished bard, 

makes art for another bird, the divine, 

for me.  

 

I want to describe the winter too; 

lyric the shock of starburst field, 

the folding shiver under the moon,  

but I hesitate, 

question my reader — 

which a robin would never do. 

 

 

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Do the neighbours know? 

 

Night-shrugging the bags from my shoulders, 
the worst part walking is the nearly home 
but not — 
when I turn the street corner  

 

and stranger, I am stilled 
by the cascade of electric stars 
across your garden trees, 
turning my evening gingerbread 

 

and this whole dark December  
to dotted lights.  

 

 

 

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