To start with there was an odd word
left like a fridge on a street corner,
not where you’d expect,
but easy enough to explain.
Then we noticed whole sentences
being wedged into strange places,
a collection of beer cans glittering
in an otherwise ordinary winter privet hedge.
Flocks of scattered thoughts began to
sweep in and out of conversations.
Little fledgling starlings running criss-cross
over a fast-food car park in shallow waves
converging on crumbs, dispersing
dodging feet.
But now and then, in a street
of divided up Victorian villas,
peeping out from among the armchairs
and cars with tyres sunk as pumpkins
left out on walls,
there’d be a flash of stained glass
a detail of fine cornice
a still recognisable phrase.
