And through the cold coat of
Winter wear, a greener bud
begins on branch that dares
to hope for warmth and better light.
Here, here and here
there lifts a brave blade of
grass, defies threats of frost
and skies overcast by monochrome bright
Sun shaded from sight.

Then tumbles flake into warm drip
of life and wakens and washes
the dust from daffodil eyes
who poke a cautious tip through
earthy blankets
first one there, then there, now
here and here and here and here.

And then a yellow strikes upon the
V of beating wings, and kisses
the sleeping bark awake on trees
who unwrap their groggy arms
and stretch towards the rays
with greening finger leaves
and catkins and stickybuds
and squirrels who agitate
and chatter
and bees who sing a welcome again
to tulips who rush to the surface
to greet them
and rabbits and foxes who chase
and soon we two join too like lost peoples
returned from long dark adventures, emerged,
to add to the business bustlings of
Spring.

Mission after failed mission of overtightened shirt cloth incomparable to the air-brushing wizardry of a celebrity book of spells; calorie-counted celebrity inspiration, feeling the burn; “one more minute, don’t forget to stretch and warm down”.

A plastic-propped peep into a better life where everyone is shiny and the right machine can make you God’s own barista without even having to watch the accompanying DVD box set.

All on the never never. ’til the never becomes the now.

In a surge of nature versus big business our crude seas wash over us in an endless tide of promises and slicked birds who drown in the failures of our present way of life.

In the background; an urgent pitch to call now and pay nothing for twelve months. A lesson unlearned.

In the foreground; stands a poet working out the best way to perform the Heimlich maneuver on a dog whilst he waits for his toast to turn tan.

So this is what we’ve become.

To the sound of screaming,
turns the eyes and the ears of the ordinary
agape in horror at the desperation of a jumper
as he splashes through the glass
fixing a final flickering gaze on tear-welling faces who,
with tightened lips let pass a whimper “oh no, oh no oh no”.
The rain of rock crashes chase away trivial reality,
the lattes, the must-do meetings,
the synchronization of calendars
in a kerosene flash; thanks to religious brutality.
There, urgent amongst the
surging clouds are those in
black turned gray. Gold-hatted
knights who shout for your own good.
Scared like the brokers,
fathers like the chairmen,
rushing like the insurers
but they choose to run the other way.

I often pause to think of others.
Like the couple on Beak Street I saw leaning
in against the March wind, pinching
still-fitting 1970′s smeary gabardine
mackintoshes around them like over-stuffed
sausage casings.

He; gaunt and with that sunken on-the-way
from this life look, she; rotund and
waddling with cheap home perm flattened
under a clear plastic penny market rain
hood whilst her free hand drags a
shopping trolley between them both like
an unruly and unwilling square tartan-coated pet.

She chose to wear those opaque tan tights
and they are so cliche, aren’t they,
with her seen-better-days blue brogue comfortable shoes
which shuffle shuffle and scuff along
next to the groceries and the gray nearly-ghost.

He looks like a man who has resolved to
hang on a day longer if he can, for her
sake, or for someone’s sake if not hers.
I’m sure it’s not for his.

His gaping-mouthed breath, like it
must sound loud enough to startle although
the bus window and the rattle of empty seats
mask it from me, sucks his cheeks in and out
with the effort and I see his eyes scrunch
up unseen as he keeps up her pace which he taps
out with a walking stick, stomp, stomp,
stomp like he is grinding out cigarette butts
with every step.

To where and why do they walk so painfully
in this bouncing rain?  What are their
names?  Is this yesterday’s sour wine of
relationships I see through the dragon puff
of diesel exhaust or a glorious culmination?
Or perhaps mainly their reality, unpoetic and
unremarkable except to someone like me who
often pauses to think of others.

To love means my heart does little skips when I
look at my wife  and she hasn’t noticed I’m
looking so I can see the complex mixture of
browns that blend so perfectly to make the color
of her eyes.  It makes me smile.

To be there means to make The Little Kid put on her
Aztec hat, not because it makes her look cute, which
it does, but because it stops her face getting red
and puffy in the bitter wind, even though she looks sweet
with those fluffy red cheeks.

To be at peace means to notice the snoring of the dogs
as they lie stiff-legged in that sun, plush against the
carpet and to smile, again, at the silly sounds a little dog can
make whilst it sleeps.

To be happy means to take all of these things, live
them fully and let them sink slowly into what makes me
who I am right now; a happy man.

To be lucky means that I can tell you about them.

Liquid solid flows with the puff, ochre stripes washed
grey with the powdering of divinity. The lines of his thoughts
across his brow, deep and drifting, running over to wash the beckoning
fingers of smoke’s fate, launching to drift on torrid
currents of time and fickle happenings, thrown back and
forth further and far from the loud “haaaaa” of the exhale.

Their prose and statuary, towering in their microscopic
magnificance amongst the whisps of their fleeting existence
unseen by those who did not look for them, breathed in to
be a part of those who did not make them; even those who
did not pause to question or care if they were likely to exist.

If, at that moment He should clap his hands or
spin to attend to some other diversion they might
scatter in the draught. It’s a fact; you can’t unscatter
smoke.

I woke gently, but all of a sudden today to
the sound of a cartoon voice singing rhymes
in a fake Manhattan accent.

The dark is hollow, lit by the sound of my snoring
dog which bounced off just-familiar walls and
rapped against the ice on the windows. A
rumbling echo-locator beacon mapping the room.

The Omaha cold has a smell. An aroma that you
don’t get back in the nooks and crannies
of British suburbia. Over there the cold has an odour
of rotten wool or skanky grey cardboard. But here,
here it is… incisive. Like the edges of
a pattern cut into a good quality glass.
Etched. Purposeful. It tricks you like this.

And here the wind doesn’t nudge you about and
flick playful flakes at you; it pinches your ears and
slaps the raw open palm of its hand full and hard
against your sore cheeks and tweaks the end of
your nose to make it drip drip drip sniff.

Home-coming is the sound of ruddy-faced people
knocking the life back into gloved hands followed by
the communion of banging boots free of snow that
doesn’t melt. Watching are hurrying snow plows
littering dirty white drifts at every road junction;
sullen funeral pyres where Nebraska’s December
buries the bones of our long sweet lazy summer.

Up, with a cuddle for the roused snorer and a
pat on the head for Toto’s double before I stitch
myself into my great galumping snow boots and
ram my “ear hat” down hard to thwart frostbite’s
chances. Fingers straight and stiff in waterproof
gloves; required, essential – skin dies here in minutes
if you let the swirl of the wind start to snack on it. I kiss,
check, keys, check and head Oates-like to the car.

Half-light twilight and the crackle of trees flexing
nakedly in the chilling breeze that bites. The blipper
clunks the door locks and, with an OCD glance for the
right park light, full red dial, full blast fan on; both
heaters set to beat the ice away from the poor
shivering windows.

So I begin to scrape away winter from your windshield.
Methodically because that’s how my mind likes to do
these things, the way I’m designed. Square scrapes,
neat edges, top to bottom. The sound of the blade
bounces off the garages and walls. A rasping, juddering
staccato cackle of frozen resistance. No bird sounds,
no traffic noise; just me and the scraper and…
that…
damn…
stubborn…
frost, thicker than the glass I’m hacking it from.

He’s got that blankie still. Rotted with the
drool of comfort years and glazed with some
real sweaty summers. Snuggles it close as ever.
An anchor in the squally seas of change.
Creaks those cranky joints together with
a huge Kirky-boy sigh and thumps himself
into the cloth with squeezed-together eyes.
I swear he used to smile.

Now he just rumbles on that blankie, day and night
with those wobbly-paw half-yelps of him
chasing down sleep sheep or some night rabbits.
Or he just guards at that bottom window and sighs
through his nose at the disappointments. Waiting.
Early days he’d point the flop from his ears,
whiskers shivering, and bob his head like Ali if he heard
a car coming up the road. It’s knocked the shine out of
his eyes, all that fruitless checking and weaving.

Now all Kirk’s got left is the stare-and-stare, glassy eyed,
into the distance. Not a flicker except a blink to wet those
big brown pleading pools. But he hasn’t given up even though I’ve
explained it all to him until we’ve both had enough and
wack down by your couch. I’ve written to everyone else
and told them, cancelled things, notified, crossed the T’s,
but, I just don’t know what to say to Kirk.
Kirk’s the problem.

The shadows hide things.
Malevolences who loom at the edges of my sleep.
As I start to sink into the marshmallow quicksand of my bed
they huddle, a gaggle of threats in the corners of the room, plotting.
They know me. They know the real me.
The me that runs away from trouble.
The me that’s scared of everything.
Overspending me, lying me, cheating, crying me.
I am deafened as they bang the drum of my heartbeat,
a roaring, storming crashing sea of a pulse in my ears,
relentless;
beating, beating, beating, beating.
Have mercy!
The night terrors whirl slowly in from
the menacing giant squid-ink black abyss
of my bed-time sight. Their voices whisper
to me; “bereft, bereaved, bequeathed: the pain”.
They creep their fingers into my mind
and squeeze out the happy thoughts;
“make way, make way for the doubts,
clear out, clear out for the fears”.
I shake my head, desparation shake,
writhe to loosen their grip on me.
Swhirling spirits, they gather themselves
together, form into something dirty, something from
the precipice pit come to feed on the sap of my soul;
“we will riddle you, we will rack you”
the zepherous whisper as I burn in their hell.
“Money, money, money”, there’s the taunt.
I’m forcing myself to think of beaches
and sunshine, deep breaths, deep breaths, but
they’re pulling at my tortured twitching legs again;
“we have you”, the pain, the pain, the pain.