Sunday 5 February 2017


A poem from my collection Fractures and Other Thin Confusions

Picaro Poets, 2016


CRACK   
                                    
The crack in the wall
was getting wider
worried me a lot 
from floor to corner of the ceiling
like a zig zag trace
of a lightening bolt

I used to muse
and wonder
how much worse it would get
but in the end
it got so wide that
on a fine day
you could see
the cloud creased sky
and on a dark night
the silent stars

that was when
I told you about it
you rang one day one day
without warning
without warning after so many years
there is a crack I said.
I can come and help you with that you said
loving me

but I didn’t ask you over
I ignored your offer of help
and only a year later  -  natural causes
you were old after all,
but you knew about cracks
oh yes you knew about cracks


the builder said it was
because of the drought
and that when the drought was over
the crack in the wall would close
just as if it had never been there
never been there at all

he was right, - well almost
the drought is over now
the brick hard clay soil softened
moist malleable compliant
the crack in the wall has closed over
well nearly - but not quite.

still the faintest trace
from floor to the corner of the ceiling
a jagged shadow of a hairline fracture
fine broken eggshell fissure
visible just
haunting yet
even now,

now that the drought is over.