Good morning

Beetle-brooched, 

the lawn confects a display 

of petals with the dawn,

the ruined rose scattered

in celebration of the day, 

and gauzy webs hang necklaces 

of dew between the thorns

to catch the fugitive light

where bees stravaig.

A sparrow complains 

about nothing in particular

just to advertise to the rest

that it exists. A well fed cat 

relishes ghosts of previous kills

that populate the invisible world

it surveys from a sunlit windowsill. 

A brace of streetwise magpies

scout the garden for snacks.

The threat of noon hangs mild

and neighbourly upon the fence

as the disc of the sun insists

through lingering morning mists.

Breakfast aromas coil in the senses.

The radio keeps the world at bay,

safely constraining distant outrage

to a reporter's polite monologue.

Does the world contain this moment,

or does this moment contain the world,

its daily recapitulation of bliss 

turning newspapers to confetti?

Blue

I remember the day 

the world ended.

No-one else noticed, 

but when I looked up 

on that clear, cloudless day,

I noticed the sky was 

a deeper shade of blue.

The difference was so slight 

it was almost imperceptible, 

but it was enough 

to register with me

as an irreversible change.

Some fault must have slipped,

some axis tilted, something 

somewhere forever altered.

I was ten years old.

I knew it was over, 

and nothing would 

be the same again.

Perilaus

We have made a brazen bull of the climate,

set a fire under its belly and climbed inside,

eager to impress the sadistic tyrants we serve,

keen to keep the coin they give, believe their lies,

and lie to ourselves. Our melodious screams, 

are attenuated through this ingenious device 

that transmits our empty bellowing, broadcast 

in a parody of distress as temperatures rise.

Will eyes become diamonds, bones obsidian,

cut, polished and set in a crown or dagger hilt?

Will our sacrifice leave an offering to be found

among the ashes, or only a residue of grief and guilt,

or nothing at all? For what remains of prophecy

when it is fulfilled? And beforehand, when ignored,

what is the point of words, when they may as well be

the spent rage of a doomed bull beneath the sword.

First light

We peer deep into the darkness 

and see distant galaxies swarm, waltz, sway

and pirouette in their dance with gravity

as it twists and stretches our lines of sight

through space and time. Their ancient light 

sweeps like the hem of a sequin gown

over a period piece ballroom floor long ago

in some elaborate costume drama cosmogony

where they curtsey and bow: intrigue, deceit, 

attraction, betrayal, victory and defeat

played out across billions of light years. 

They stick in the golden honeycomb of our telescope,

caught in the freeze frame of our brief existence, 

the span of time we take to contemplate miracles

a mere glimpse compared to the gulf 

across which the image of them has travelled

as if printed on the wings of a butterfly,

dealan-dé, lightning of God, lock and hinge of yesterday, 

carrying our soul from this world to the next. 

Our slight lens is nothing compared to the mass

that leads this starlight in its pas de deux, 

its cosmic cabriole, the grand jeté of its lensing arc

inviting us to make our own imaginative leap

that sees us consider how we might seem

to someone peering at us through the depths

of space, a distant observer in the far future,

after a similar interval of time has elapsed

and our first light finally reaches them.

With the flick of a switch that is our entire history

we turn on the light bulb of humanity,

imagining it makes our dusty garret 

here in the debris of star formation

itself a Pharos shining across the nights to come,

only to find its unruly rays tumble like tangled spaghetti

spilling across alien skies, or worse than that, 

perhaps the duration of our civilisation

will be cut short, curtailed by catastrophe, 

so that we can only be seen blinking on and off

for a cosmic instant, by an observer 

looking in exactly the right place 

at exactly the right time,

and what are the odds of that? 

(Written on seeing the first deep field images acquired by the James Webb Space Telescope)