NOR AM I OUT OF IT

By Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Pottering might be
the proper gait of high summer,
quite as full of purpose
as butterflies or a cherry.

Man with a bad cold
cannot see the same stream
a woman does
or the white crane
standing ankle-deep in brown water,
for the glassy gates of awareness
have been half closed
or swathed in woolly fog.

Meandering must be
the way to wilfully wander
tripping over a solid thought
like the unseen plastic
hose.

One bruising day soon
all this will pass away
so he can watch once more
the glint of light on every ripple
and those curvetting swallows
that skate above the surface
unheedingly

for their sunripe up-and-doing
or a mackintosh of leaves.

The “Times Literary Supplement” critic Eric Ormsby said of Chris Wallace-Crabbe, ‘…a genial smuggler of surprises’ and ‘His uncommon affability, even when treating the gravest subjects, leaves the reader unprepared for his sudden luxuriance of phrase.’