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).
