#poem Archives - ROBERT COLE https://robertspcole.com/tag/poem/ London Poems Fri, 29 Jan 2021 12:03:09 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 https://i0.wp.com/robertspcole.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/cropped-the-lake-and-the-isle3-scaled-1.jpeg?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 #poem Archives - ROBERT COLE https://robertspcole.com/tag/poem/ 32 32 179518686 Winter Again https://robertspcole.com/winter-again/ Sun, 29 Mar 2020 10:00:00 +0000 http://robertspcole.com/?p=2480 The post Winter Again appeared first on ROBERT COLE.

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alium blooms

As winter ends, winter starts again.
Late March warmth lies with coughs and fever,
face-grey shadows darken longer days,
and high-sky sun shines on windowless wards.
Hospital green is the season’s colour.

Garden foxes play in rose-dawn light,
rising doubt hangs in latent streets, odd wasps
drift between blossoms spreading and seeding
unwanted fruit, and the numbers explode
like purple globes of allium blooms.

Thoughts of renewal are not what they were:
first-cut strips of grass mask earth beneath
and, at a safe distance, tender leaves grieve.
Summertime begins. Winter starts again.

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]]> 2480 The Calm before the Quiet https://robertspcole.com/the-calm-before-the-quiet/ Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:34:30 +0000 http://robertspcole.com/?p=2440   It is pretty ugly between Gravesend and Stone Crossing. Puzzling through Rosherville,to Northfleet’s exhausted ragstone quarry,Kimberly Clark is making Andrex. At Ebbsfleet, the footpath runs in zigzagsspanning voids and empty strips of railwaybehind galvanised pikes battened by bars. Half an hour later we see discardedbottles of corrosive tipped in a ditchand wild snapdragons grow […]

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It is pretty ugly between Gravesend
and Stone Crossing. Puzzling through Rosherville,
to Northfleet’s exhausted ragstone quarry,
Kimberly Clark is making Andrex.

At Ebbsfleet, the footpath runs in zigzags
spanning voids and empty strips of railway
behind galvanised pikes battened by bars.

Half an hour later we see discarded
bottles of corrosive tipped in a ditch
and wild snapdragons grow beside hawthorns
spray-painted grey with exhaust-fume silt.

We take a wrong turning, re-trace our steps,
pass a builders’ merchant’s stockpile of slabs
and an elephants’ graveyard of buses.

At Greenhithe the rain comes. Soon silent Spring
will spread – not unlike the virus – and hide
hedgerow crud beneath blankets of brambles,
nettles, bindweed, storksbill and bittercress.

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