who peeled the bedspread from his bed and caught

a strange impression in the cotton sheet,

a new expression buried in the pillow-case

beside his wife, and stood

a lifelong minute on the ocean-floor of outer space,

lead-limbed, ashen-faced.

THE JAY

I was pegging out your lime-green dress;

you were hoping the last of the sun

might sip the last few beads of drip-dry water

from its lime-green hem.

I had a blister-stigmata the size of an eye

in the palm of my hand

from twisting the point of a screw

into the meat of the house. Those days. Those times.

The baby bird was crossing the gravel path

in the style of a rowing boat crossing dry land.

Struck with terror when I held it tight

in the gardening gloves of humankind, we saw for ourselves

the mouse-fur face and black moustache,

the squab of breast-meat under its throat,

the buff-brown coat and blue lapels,

the painted inside of its mouth,

the raw, umbilical flute of its tongue

sucking hard at the sky for a taste of air.

Setting it free, it managed no more than a butterfly stroke

to the shade of an evergreen tree, where we let it be.

They say now that the basis of life

in the form of essential carbon deposits

could have fallen to earth as a meteorite, or comet,

and that lightning strikes from banks of static

delivered the spark that set life spinning.

But this three-letter bird was death, death thrown in from above,

death as a crash-brained, bone-smashed, cross-feathered bullet,

so we could neither kill it nor love it.

THE SUMMERHOUSE

With the right tools it was less than a day’s work.

It wasn’t our trade, but a wire-brush was the thing

for fettling mould and moss from bevelled window frames.

Sandpaper took back old wood to its true grain.

Winter pressed its handshake, even through thick gloves.

From the boozy warmth of the boiler-room I lugged

a litre tin of Weatherseal, and popped the lid.

Strange brew. Varnish or paint? Water-based, it had a tone

or shade, but carried solvent on its breath

and held the stars and planets of a pinhole universe

suspended in its depth. Some gemstone in its liquid state—

it fumed when ruffled with a garden cane.

Winter stood on the toe-end of leather boots.

And as the substance in the tin went down it lost its shine,

and from its lower reaches came a sluggishness—

a thick, begrudging treacle, and the colour brown.

Some change in temperature was the root cause.

Rifles stamped their feet and clapped their hands together

over on the firing-range. It was going dark

but unconcerned we dipped the brushes for a second coat.

It was time-travel, of a sort. Having given our all

to this chapel of sun-loungers and soft drinks,

to the obvious glory of ultraviolet light, we found ourselves

standing instead by a wooden shed, painted with mud and shit.

THE ENGLISH

They are a gentleman farmer, living