THINGS

SEVEN KILOS : ASHES : PEBBLE

THE LAMPSHADE OF MY DREAMS : THE FISH

ATTILA'S MOTHER : EXAMINATION

SEVEN KILOS

A pile of palletised pots
Of poultry manure.
Each one precisely seven kilos.
A packaged euphemism
For chicken shit.
And next?
Re-cycled tabloids
Sold as
Inked-wood fibre sheets.
Bull shit.

ASHES

The tide-edge of the sea
Soaks itself into the sand
Vanishing, until the next line
Draws itself on the sand.
Here, in the time
between sea drawn lines,
I drew another,
Letting her ashes trickle
Along the smooth, wet beach
In a thin, frail hour-glass fall.
Noticing their similarity to sand,
I thought of time and tide.

PEBBLE

How did you get there
Round, perfect pebble?
How many tides tumbled
Your corners and edges away?
How long your journey
From boulder-birth
To this harvest moment?
It is of no consequence;
Neither days nor decades matter,
For your time is measureless.
Yet, I have snatched you
From your time;
I have frozen your shape.
And hold in my hand
Millions of years.
I have stopped time
In the palm of my hand.

THE LAMPSHADE OF MY DREAMS

for Kati

For some reason,
Totally inexplicable,
Like her feminine logic,
She dreamed of that lampshade.
The curved oriental shape.
The light, delicate colour
Of the woven straw.
All fixed in her head,
By recurrent dreams.
Then suddenly there it was,
Exactly as foreseen;
A dream displaced by reality,
For just three ninety-nine,
And inexpressible joy!

THE FISH

I had passed the freezer
Many times where
Whole, packed fish
Lay cling-filmed
To plastic trays.
Today, my grandson
Pulled up his two and a half years
To peer over its edge
At the inanimate
Freeze-framed shoal.
Their dead eyes
Fixed his wondering stare.
"Fish." he said, "Sleeping."
In that moment
I longed to press "Start",
And watch the freeze-frame
Become an undersea paradise,
Where fish swim forever
And small children
Don't have to be told about death.

ATTILA'S MOTHER : EXAMINATION

Things : Page Two

All poems and photographs [unless otherwise acknowledged] 
 © Bryce Cooke  All rights reserved

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