This train is bound for Wigan, this train.

This train is bound for Wigan, this train.

This train is bound for Wigan.

Praise the lord ’cause it’s a big ’un.

This train is bound for Wigan, this train.

Spring: Mayday Mayday

Spring: Mayday Mayday

I can always tell when it’s spring. There’s this plane crash,

And it happens to crash into our house.

It’s as sure a sign as any sign is.

I step into the kitchen and there it is: the wreckage.

Thick girders of light split the house from every direction.

Half the plane’s fuselage is in the sink, soaked in hot oil,

Tick tick ticking – the sound of sulking metal cooling.

There’s glass everywhere.

The pilot seat has stuck in the boiler. Again.

And a fountain of steam sprays bouquets of hissing greys.

A map in the corner tries to hide from the horror,

Its wet roads have spilled into rivers that have spilled into towns

That have fallen down the sides of valleys.

Postcards like doves flit through thick dusted light.

There’s burst suitcases everywhere. Everywhere.

A sign stuck in the larder door reads ‘Emergency Exit’.

I look up at the ceiling, the rotator blades have crashed through,

Drunkenly swirling oily smoke coils through the blue.

A tannoy sprawled on the washing machine, its neck snapped,

Wails to the floor where the cracked control panel is,

Where a mangle of oxygen feeder wires hiss their last breath.

The wing tips in the front room in the television screen,

Its red flashing light bleeding, the room ticks selfishly.

And the curtains are blowing outside on a fractured windowsill.

The landing gear’s in the garden, in the laburnum tree,

Its wheels still spinning. Doesn’t even know it’s landed.

Secrets and lies all over the place. Half-written postcards.

The emergency crews won’t come. They say there’s

‘Too much radiation. There’s too much friction.’

‘It’s all too dangerous,’ they say. ‘And anyway

A little spring cleaning’ll sort it all out.’

So here I am,

As the laburnum tree twists its yellow fingers

Around broken pieces of plane; it’s that time of year again.

I can smell it in the rain. It’s the time of year to clean it all up;

It’s the time of year for the crash and the time of year
to tidy it up;

To find new places to put the wreckage, to make ornaments
maybe,

To find new places for burst luggage, to sew it up maybe,

Give it away, maybe. It’s time to dig holes in the garden.

To bury it!

Time of year to cover it all and grow new plants.

Until next year when the strange fruit bursts from the earth,

Triumphant as afterlife, and falls from the skies, as if real.

That’s how I know it’s spring. See. See.

I woke this morning to find the garden and my home a wreck.