Saturday, February 4, 2012


“Slippage” © Mike Absalom January 20th
2012

In another seven years I
shall be the same age
as you were yesterday, my late
friend.
The year is shrinking.
The hawthorn berries are
already reddening.
They look like the bowls of
small polished briar pipes set among thorns. Summer slides in imperceptible
slippage towards the fall
and the year is smouldering
away.

A large brown dragonfly stops
before me treading air.
Does it know I’m here?
The Ryanair jet, the one with
the everlasting prow,
rides proudly overhead like a
warship bound for Troy.
Heaven’s trumpets resound in
the clear air.
It is a vast blue canopy now,
not just enough to make a
sailor a pair of trousers!
It has become suddenly big
enough to be a complete sail;
enough to pull this whole island
off to somewhere else.
To Troy perhaps, or Atlantis.
That would suit us.
We are all sinking.

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