In ochre eves

Looked to future

Mornings, stood

On timeless banks

Shouldered with

Kindred folk

‘It will be ok’

And we keep working.

The wood smoke vision

Rises over London, Birmingham

For the spring fair

We are making modern air

And I shiver for

The thought of

Growing life apart.

*

Stafford College Technology Centre

High Midlands

Lights blinking

In a lonely

British 2013

Our fathers’

Modernising

Greasy craft

Washed up against

Osborne’s strivers:

Her rosy red cheeks

Turned left for

First class

The flattened

Wrist in

Heart to

Last

*

How can we afford this youth?

So British from the

Mute bricks to

The Green Algae

Against the dock door

Row-row

In yellow, pink and blue

The dragon boat of

Summer school not had

In a paved land

Of reinvention

Made wanting for the life to grow

Where Heseltine with dishes sowed

This moistured air

Of health and evening woe

The London Regatta Centre

I missed

*

The Moon

Hooked on perspective

My earthly fix

Better me now

And my terrestrial flux

Marrow spine

Brow heart

Solar plexus

She understood

Herself, it,

Me, more

Than any

Educating could

Keep watch

For the falling dreams

— Four poems from the collection Modern Air.