Two poems

Monteviejo Winter

Puddles bootcrunch, leaves once green

are without vein, tobacco colour,

and staccato rain finds the unseen

skylight leak, half a basin of tears

crying onto our one-sided bed.

Do not use the ladder, you’ve said

picturing me swallowdive from its rungs

armed with gun and sealing silicone.

You worry about me healing here alone

abandoned farms, no neighbours or phone

as though if we are always together

neither of us can ever die.

But you choose not to come here

until Spring begins its lie about perpetuity

or summer cooks the slates so hot

we hopscotch to the algaed pool;

salads, wine, friends, the living lot.

Winter draws to stasis this off-duty fool

slogs me up the bogging track

to solar panel, tricky well, iceblue days

black nights 12-gauged with stars

spine-straightening owl in the cork tree.

I lair here, muddy, stubbled, stovestuck

words kept to books, mumbled me-to-me

dry firewood my warmest care.

Until, washed and anecdotal,

to love again I repair.

Mr Ah Am

His hands shake. Speech.

No longer floats like …

stings like … but sits parked

full-page colour ad, his

grandson with the gloves on.

The only bag Ali’s punching

nowadays, Louis Vuitton.

The “Ah Am” man

greatest fighter

of modesty, Sonny L

and Smokin’ Joe.

The Rope-a-Dope,

his lightning Shuffle.

The Olympian

who wouldn’t go

down for Nam,

(praps his best t.k.o).

Boxing is bad for brains

but mine will always have

okay, a soft spot.

Not even Sugar Ray

could rumble the jungle

like Mr Ah Am the G.

A sport of Nature

both butterfly and bee.

Rod Usher