PROSPECTING
MIRRORS
1
Face values as received are making make-believe
the slightest area of sky is multi-layered
myth
comes chrome and coloured as a gift
its four
wheels leaving the road for dead
you know for
loving me read loving them is
this the song I
can’t shake off? dull interests
are laying claim
to waste for what it’s worth velocity is all
the rage off-loading light
for nothing oh my
word it’s not the dark streets underwrite escape
2
Fast running out of cloud I’m
ready for sense
and worse for less specific
dreaming much
like kindergarten now as then the
atmosphere’s
uncoloured and pre-ordained returns
to gravity
the simple silvering of minnows
note my
instant disappearing act
of the first held frog
to jump my misquote surely life’s the better
half of dream what shock
is there like waking?
breaking the same and different
world in two
3
To the one unsound proposition add another
continuous mad creation here
in my history of
hope I sometimes think it didn’t happen
horrors
it did new colour programmes
faked the longed
for smile perspectives catching
tenderness in
tow less abstract now as
the days go by more
private home is the last
invention flowers fill
every room imagine a study
underlit by stars
by arrangement an angel
to spread its wings
4
Closeness this and everything
worth working
on under fire by fireside hand to hand
efficiencies achieved nights
blessed with simple
recognition better I’m told
to keep the rest of
it under lock and key especially
now with the
word out closing deals her
claim she’d once
seen Eros ‘flying’… which
going by the book
proved hard not that she’d
place a bet on it
love’s fanciful weather and
safety coming first
5
Sunflowers and mercury climbing
higher and
falling out between the words if
only I’d got
away not warmer climes but
a half-day enter-
tained without a cloud old
friends to bargain
with in a present unsubscribed to loss
take
this on trust love’s moment
even as it burns
today my well-thumbed pages take the world
on at its own game chance is as good as it
ever gets blue brochures
seeing off the light
6
Friend friend in a hurry
make it happen as
maybe the powers will not subdue or be
subdued we’re still at the
checkout smiling
grave goods in their golden true proportion all
stack up belief? it’s a total education get
some fresh air in a word
be true to form
the gift is in repair who
knows the half of it
when all day’s lost account is found in balance
heaven send the index knows
its own
PRE-WINTER MANIFEST
Night with its overdose electrons
crowding the
circuit so life becomes
but once too memorable
a window overgrown for paradox too bright
Blue in a sudden band an envelope whatever
registers enough is sure to be contained
there’s
no persuading what stops
what leaves its trace
An eye for shadow not looking
for reasons
even rests its case here’s
willing all across the
spectrum any gleam can settle
out of court
Highlights and rain in mind and then to see
what answers turn away in
two dimensions there
is something and nothing precious
in the air
The verb ‘to bear’ repeats itself
no stopping
the red reminder was it
yesterday that now
plays up good grace is actual knows its place
Another field it was resolved and not the
first time saved these maples hard along the
edge the traffic in its
shifting amplifying red
DRY SPELL (IN ITALICS)
Landscape jaundiced... certain grasses bending
To us the most elaborate and
close inspection
Of a world we knew our backpacks
overloaded
Green? we’d strayed too
far from home too
Independent for our or anyone’s good
removed
By Winter brilliant crystalline and challenging
That text its lordly ash
and aspen working
Over an eye-changing state the
truth elliptical
If obvious by evening quick
to find us out
And calling cancelling the
‘yellow word’ fool-
Hardy in its moment what
the word imposed
Was out of true the weather
changed become
A slant now clear enough
to read its downpour
Suite with words a light
unsaturating rain...
PERADVENTURE
Bare boards for the most part furniture
In store the woodlice are
making the most
Of easy come and by the
time this light
Is needed go quick miniatures of...
Composition the easy breaks
short-ordered
However they come untried
and devious?
To make themselves and all things scarce
If inspirational a witness guesses granted
Via a page of glass unframed light
riddles
My halfway house with tenderness and grief
What’s creeping in and out of fact is distance
Heaven knows and I won’t believe it
words
Dear nature cram your spreadsheet
do me
How you will and never mind the nicks
Fixed hieroglyphs are turning every shadow
Out of old estates tree-fringed
now dark
As the moment making it
hard by folly
By starlit ornamental pond the
dogs sniff
Nothing out exquisite prints
they’re frantic
Off cross-country as the word is
patched
To mend it’s a bosky text
whose storm-
Fed rills I gamble on hope’s
bender bare
And a habit doing the meanest favour
why
Not take it so be over the
worst excess
Love’s last attention sketched by dawn
a
Ring-fenced future bramble
& climbing rose
LOVERS’ LEAP: PART SONG
Classic fiction of poetry
and legend’s
England a dream out over
the pond
Half-way... holds ghosts
per million
Counting parts pale midges
a water
Drop could scatter but when or where
It’s guessing a light keeps
shadow
Busy and makes the best
of company
Unknown unpractised in the
art of
Leaping head back feet up
into the sky
There dizzy to keep a watchful eye on
Nothing it’s good no news
is even
The going my underfoot accepting
Which plain life’s abbreviated
a fair
Account of virtue hanging
on every
Word the rope pays out undone
Oak’s greeny-gold affair left
over-
Hanging soon enough grubbed
up
Put paid to guilt? remember well
I do like nothing else remember
so
The story goes it licks
its wounds
©
Peter Dent 2003