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Roads Stretch
- the humming teeth of the country.

Hillocks and tufts dwindle beyond scope
and dry moor grasses rise more steeply
where acquisitive sheep with burnt stick black

legs run or stand munching on brilliant
explosions of blades of grass, the old ram
looking fiercely, its rotating jaw providing

for its future as bullocks drape their
strength, greater than any man's, the
lions of the fields, and crows, shedding

their green turds, spread large pointed wings,
hauling their black feathers up to their hot, black
tree top factories where indefinite bits of

living matter get crammed down the throats
of young birds who caw at the sky, the
clouds settling along the sky's edge and the

ageless blue awnings that calm thought;
thought containing potential dawns and long quiet
evenings when small birds panic their way from

twig to worm to tarmac and the night sun
hardly moves but spreads its pink arms over
the dun hill tops.

The night sky swells with light, pouring whiteness,
and constellations are spliced together among too
many stars to name. We drive down to the

noisy town and the tyrannical aspect of

traffic lights.

2.
Trafalgar Square

Sunlight creates opaque patches
as we walk here,
National Art Gallery ahead -
odd, as though it is a UFO,
recently arrived.

Clutching in my pocket my Nelson
cigarette lighter and
pretending to be someone I am not,
I think: no one mourns a composer.

Honest browns and creams of woodmen
remind me of when we sat round a low
coffee table, our legs merging like some
optical illusion, as pigeons count their
numbers. Armies of breadcrumbs.

Armies of mind.

Their wings, their wings windmill.

3.
Outdoor Wedding

With rhymes in mind about the length of a road
and the depth of a sea, they enter stage left.

Nymphaeaceous bridesmaids process under

the egg white chuppah, Handel's "Fireworks" playing:

"My lily my love my turtle dove",
in this oleoresinous, oligomerous glory.

Here is the apple's landscape, the pear's clarion.

Children gather, with turquoise coats and white hats,
as morning birds chirp drops of sweetness
and fresh honey newness

among beds of pansies with bloodstains of red, red tulips.

On the earth we walk as immortals,
smothered with wealth, hearts pierced by
opulence, eating sausage rolls, gateaux, delicate
sandwiches and cream cakes.

Teeming throngs pour into the desert's cup,
diluting the spider's web coagulation.

Intolerant of the sins of the previous generation,
as immortals we walk on the earth's face.