Plastic man

Leaves and fruit of  Eurasian Walnut, (Juglans regia),  outside Green Park Station, Bath 23/10/2016

I am a plastic man,

my brain meat cracked on a pavement

in thousands, the sweep along the shores of time

of a single roll-mat wave, and the next,

the draught of a single Thor, and another.


The clouds mimic darkness, the pestle muddies the water-bowl

the big animal swims and the leaves flow across

diagonally between islands, the dungarees and socks to the wash and drying-stand,

the cutlery to the cutlery-box and the table laid for tomorrow's breakfast,

reading In Kedar's Tents in a Brook Street hotel...

the chapters ruffle in the open air.



Set fire to me if you can!

for the season's incense, cracking in the long dark evenings.

Autumn is a whispering season too: Mosul, Mosul, it whispers.
It's a time to clear the camps of excessive growth,
And often the sound of a heavy footfall: Trump.

And every nut colours their vote with crayons, or ballpoints blackened at the chewed end.

Common Lime leaves (Tilia x europaea), Frome 23/10/2016

And I remember laughing with the edge upon  the wind
and your nose your little apple nose the photographs of you and me
remote among the specks, the sooty moulds upon the setting suns of long descending yesterdays

Sweeping the wind and the flail;
the eye doubtful,
particulars in masses,
sharpened by the shades,
the tree emerging from the wood
we see him suddenly
in thin robes
I am the plastic man...

What are these gestures
in the midst of the slide?                [And it comes to me as by carpal tunnel syndrome

November campion with a torn grace;
The last outburst in the nursing home;
we were too distressed to remember what he sang.

The crowds tramp like leaves across the iron bridge.

Trodden leaves of Cherry (Prunus species) and Norway Maple (Acer platanoides),  from a pavement  in Bath, 23/10/2016