I see your form
In cups of tea
In clouds and fog
You stroke the land
With white-gloved hands
I see your form
In morning mist
In Yorkshire’s pits —
A bed of holes that lies
In wait to swallow trains
You’re hard to see
This summer morn
And hard to grasp
As people board
The streamlined bird
With heated lungs
Your tender cloud
First breath then steel
Could be a soul
If not a horse
Enter the birdman, writing on the back of an envelope. Desperate to shift the smoke. He’s already laced the big end with a stink bomb.
Seagull
Kingfisher
Herring Gull
Wild Swan
Guillemot
Woodcock
Falcon
Kestrel
Strong on the wing.
The birdman thinks all manner of thoughts. He hears them in his head—a chorus of fine detail.
How to disperse the smoke? Great Western hear fanfares in their heads!
And there it is... a tiny indentation... where someone has pressed their thumb into the plasticene.
A dimple, barely visible. That can’t be the solution.
It is the solution.