The going light

Michael W. Thomas

Wigginton, Hertfordshire, June 2021


Even now,

after all that’s faltered
and
and left promises half-buzzed,

summer can still burst out of my eyes

and I can find the going light

through the mudlands,

across the floes of yesterday’s desire.

Sometimes my body

can recover its stockinged height

and meet the morning easy on the nose.

Of course the shadows breed

and menace the fattest candle,

rattle like lengths unbolted,

go up and over like gallows-hoods,

close like the hands of assassins.

But even so a day can break
at beautifully goonish angles

to grant me a dogleg of June skies,

a lazy brush of warmth

as from leaves grown broad

in unimpeded places,

webbed and coloured

exactly as a child would dream them.




This poem first appeared in Michael’s latest collection, A Time for Such a Word (Black Pear Press, 2024).

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