For a few moments, maybe some minutes,
let’s dreamy drift into the feather crush
of London’s clouds of cherry blossom bliss.

The buds, which season-swell with ruby flush,
fill as racing pulses fill impatient
flesh with rhapsodical urges to burst.

Then Beauty comes in given radiance
and resting adoration of the first
and lasting shapes and shades of love.

It comes in silence after flowering,
where stillness is reflected in the sky,
colour pinks the ruffling swirls above,
sense enslaves the energies of thinking
and, for some moments, we are gratified.

Same train, same bus, same strange metal giraffes.
This, though, is different. The storm wind is armed:
tiny water dumdums, as hard as ice,
spear and splay, needling my defenceless face.

Plastic mud-larky litters the foreshore:
old rope, smashed flowerpots and bookies’ pens
blown out of the water by gale forces.

At Shornemead Fort we rest and eat our pies.
We pass short-shank horses and burnt out cars.
We walk the wet backs of Gravesend boatyards.
Shocked and silenced, we board the train back home.

Waxy sunshine, low in the winter sky,
makes twilight in the middle of the day.

Weird palavers of birds – lapwings we think –
stretch and compress: twist, swoop, and come to rest.

Flat against the north horizon, motionless,
stand strange giraffes on London Gateway Docks.