Sunday 21 August 2011

Hampstead Heath

Are these your signature handstrokes,
Your fresh fingers smearing streaks
Of pellucid flame like broken yokes
On the sky's empty peaks?
Voices like the bells of summer ring and spark
And melt with the naiveness of the wind.
This performance of fires has all the craft marks
Of heroic mischief, the sapidity of your lips.
Now the horizon has blushed into white
Despite the bruised cirrus of drying blood,
The slow and focused flags of the night
And the rainy chrome of the city's hood.
A rainbow of violet salutes above my head
And an ageless song fills my breath.