It's Still Life

The Colour of Elsewhere — Poems from the Periphery

Leaving — I

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— 5 July: Periphery

People think
I still see the tree.
I don’t — not like before.

I see a crow arrive with its voice.
Tyres tell me where the road is.

Silence isn’t empty.
It’s the place
where the birds
used to be.

The world arrives
in pieces.

A scented shadow.
Heat lifting
from stone.
A squirrel running
the fence length.

My mind
builds the rest.

So when I write,
I leave
those pieces
for you —

because that’s
how I found it.

You call it a poem.

I call it seeing.

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— 7 July: Gathering

There are places
that gather stories.

Not because they call them.

Because people
arrive there
already carrying them.

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— 7 July: West Sussex — North

afternoon heat.
roses scent the air.

suitcases open
on the bed.

these shoes.
those shoes.

socks.
shorts.
tops.
passports.

tomorrow,
we escape north.

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— 9 July: Belgium

corn
and corn
and more

crows circle
July-ripe fields.

harvest.

hay stubble.
smoke
blows horizontal.

leafy.
cool shade.
egg salad and cress.
on white.

elder.
alder.
pine.
oak and ash.

corn.
corn.
and yes,
more.

and we call it
the Colour of Elsewhere.

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— 10 July: Osnabrück, Germany

The Colour of Thunder (a list poem)

the colour of thunder is
daybreak,
the blue shine
in a crow’s feather.

a boat
without water,
a skinned knee,
sunburn.

the snap
of a wet towel.

the prick
of a rose’s thorn.

high noon
without a shadow,

the blue noise
of a siren.

Road Closed.