not just in the stretched sunsets and ticking clocks of poets
but in the microwave – those four insistent bleeps
Pachelbel’s Canon
the word ‘lachrymose’
having to google the word lachrymose
and the breathless stop when you spot
what could be a new mole on your back
or hear the guy who voiced your favourite cartoon
has died.
It’s running out in thin, tired columns of smoke
dirty yellow numberplates
blurred brake lights on December 7th somewhere
near Cheadle
the way the dog limps
and someone says poor old fella
and someone else says I love you
geese crying in on the dark, that scrape of migration
the pink-and-purple ‘welcome home’ banner in the window
of a bungalow for someone you later heard was coming home for the last time
