Lichened Pavements

This is trochaic apart from line 8. It seems often the case that a strand of thought in trochaics ends up naturally in an iambic line.

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Lichened pavements in the winter sun,
Emerald-yellow, dewdrop bright,
Glow like gauze which the spiders spun,
Flashed by the sun’s cold morning light.

Orange-startling like a bloodshot eye,
Flinging shadow from its horizon’s poise,
Warmth exuding in the icy sky,
The sun’s silence is a sort of noise.

Finger-shadows stroke the ground,
Green-gleam lichen swells and spreads;
Kneeling, I studied each rift and mound,
Worlds in tiny on kerbs and treads:

Grass-stained sawdust with stems and fronds,
3-D bulk with mites a’run,
Forest-dense – all boughs and wands,
Flecked with grey, flame-red and dun.

Living, thickening, by years undaunt,
Sponge-piling pavements each season passed,
Glint with frost-melt, this lichen will flaunt,
Thriving still when my grave is grassed.

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© March 2016

The Old Man

The entire poem should have been written in February 2015 but flu intervened; by the time I had the energy to continue it was May and it seemed silly writing about deep winter in the burgeoning Spring. Therefore I waited to February 2016 to write the second part. Of course, the person writing and the theme had changed a bit since 2015; perhaps the different emphases can be felt in the second part.

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A ghost in life is passing by
Ignored in presence like a sigh.
Drag-footed, dusty, freight with years,
Sag-skinned, fog-eyed, with clothes in smears,
I shambled pavements frosted grey
One February freezing day
As mothers with their bawling young
Raced buggies with their shopping hung,
Anxious to reach the warmth of home
And wipe those faces’ grime and rheum.
To those young women, task-befraught,
I was an eye-edge, old-clothed nought,
Of no concern to dashing, feeding,
Early playgroups, early reading;
Street clutter that as well might be
The bare trunk of a winter tree.
Of parenthood, the joys, the sorrow,
Have sidestepped me like last year’s morrow:
The very children, buggy-couched,
In blankets, hats and mittens pouched,
Dismissed me with a through-see eye
Like chub-faced satraps sweeping by.
Just one or two their self-love ceased,
Their mewling paused, their fat eyes creased,
Struck by my one substantial note,
A bulbous beard from lip to throat
Billowing white like old Saint Nick’s,
Which summoned up a few faint flicks
Of memory that recently,
So parents said, one such as I
Had slithered roofs and ice-hard drifts
To creep through rooms and bring forth gifts.

But on the instant, eye-light dulled
And Buddha-like uninterest nulled
The quick glance between them and I;
Their buggies sped past on the fly
As mothers rushed, and naught was left
But waning backs: it felt like theft.