Poetry

Driving to the airport, we pass the equestrian
statue in the park: the plumed general
on his narrow plinth. It’s not easy

It’s all come down to me sitting under a tree
on a river bank
on a sunny morning.
It’s an inconsequential event
that won’t go down in history.

William Blake saw an angel
sitting in a tree. Blondin crossed Niagara
on a cable. And Maria Taglioni
for a Russian highwayman
danced on a panther’s skin spread over the snow
in 1855.

Here where the dark-sourced stream brims up,
Reflecting daylight, making sound
In its stepped fall from cup to cup