Fly on the wall

I usually try to write at least one poem a year. This is my effort for 2011.

You wake at 5 am, ashamed. A rough
wind billows, unseating garden furniture
as next-door's mobile tinkles, shivers.

In the dream—a wild ride along the strand
in an open-topped car, black sand and dancing.
At a ball old loves, still beautiful, ignore you,

though you find yourself witty. A hump
on your shoulder grows to an inarticulate silence
as filmmakers, glad for the find of a circus act,

slide over the dance-floor, cheerfully afraid.
On camera in the washroom only one friend
will defend you, dabbing her blackened eye.

Staccato squeal of a fox's breathless terror.
The wind is blowing bed sheets into sails.
The plash of car tires. Another rainy day.


Jan 6th 2012