Inside, in the half-light, the iron rot took hold.
Forgotten service–obsolete.
Salt-coin neglect.

The money flowed inland,
Moored on an hourglass choke.
No one told the sea.

Out of morning
a misted light,
glowing fire
in the air.

A very long time ago

Stephen Fry’s godfather, the
Justice, Sir Oliver Popplewell
Who chaired the inquiry
Into the Bradford City

Beneath my armpit lives a Sinbad the size of a thumb.
His imagination feeds through an umbilical cord tied to my womb.
Now and then, people hear him speaking through a giant microphone—
Singing,
Cracking jokes,

In the portacabin that morning, men smoked
and looked at last week’s paper again.
There was no water to fill the urn.
The first job – to get connected

A blustery day –
the wind too strong for kites
or for lifts to the sky.
“To a thoughtful spot,” it cites
and pins me to the earth.

except this burnt red vase.
Hand shaped in the muffled roar,
devouring flame in the furnace’s mouth.

Look, Drew, the
plums are in

pieces beneath
us. I dreamt: