The locksmith (published in The North)
He looked like a professional criminal gone straight.
He unzipped a holdall, and picked a mirror, the size
of a pound, fixed to a folding metal arm. He didn’t speak.
He balanced spectacles on the end of his nose. He knelt
beside me, pushed the mirror through the letterbox.
He scrutinised the small reflection, the mortice lock.
He rose in front of me as if uncertain what to say.
There was noise behind us, red movement –
a woman in a tracksuit arrived, jogging up the steps
with a bag from the van. She spoke the time, marked the clock.
She did the talking. She took the money – shook the building
with the drilling, the hammer, the smashing of the lock.
North Street, August 2020 (published in The Alchemy Spoon)
That afternoon the sunshine
baked all the colour from the scene.
The Hercules
appeared, a hundred feet above
the street – the four propellor engines
placed it fifty years ago, on a painted plate
in a children’s picture book.
Cars had vanished,
the road was empty, the road was wider.
The pubs were closed. The little town
stunned by the heat from another country,
the surprise of the plane.
My old man (published in South Bank Poetry)
In his chair,
in retirement sitting there,
collar open
now without his tie,
the linen spread
by rolled-up sleeves
as Ida shows the pot –
sings her dillies and dallies
dallies and dillies
turns her head
and smiles at her old man.
He twinkles back
above the headlines:
‘No galloping, Ida,
while you’re following that van.’
Mary’s last day on Planet Earth (published in Poetry Bus)
She hovers by trestle tables on the prom
turns bric a brac, like an old gull pushing
picking over shells for signs of life.
She peers through large glasses,
tuts at Technicolor smut
on the front of paperbacks,
thumbs the grease
from price stickers
on the underside of a sailing ship,
a blue-and-white statuette.
At a Bakelite telephone
she winks at a fellow browser
weighs the receiver
holds it to her ear,
returns it to the cradle.
She smiles to herself,
adjusts her woolly hat
nods at the woman in the tabard
with the Tupperware box and
shuffles on, returning to the start.
Setting off again she hums a tune
pulls along her trolley bag.
With a minute left Mary picks,
shakes a snow globe of her town and
stops. Looks up.
Seems to catch
something beyond the clock
far along the esplanade
rising quickly in the sky.
She half turns, falls
the globe rolls
from her hand,
one bounce
and Weymouth in summer
cracks on the concrete
spilling glitter
on the wind and sand.