One of my first poems, sitting in Edinburgh’s Forest Cafe looking out at the city’s polluted and trampled snow, clogging the shoes, rugs and gutters, sitting in clumps and contoured pools on the streets and in our heads. Thanks to old Ben Heron who gleefully bashed out poems on his typewriter: A wizard is never late…
A film of slush clings to the streets
Water caught by the cold
Without the energy of liquid
Or beauty of ice.
Slush fills my arteries
Sluggish and cool
It languishes through my body.
Daylight half-heartedly hurries
Darkness lingers
Longer than is comfortable
I crave a cosy hole
To insulate, isolate, and occupy
Fortified against the frost
I sleep under siege until the spring sun.
But the city does not hibernate
Cut off from seasons,
The slow and sacred oscillations
Of this green Earth
It marches on
A belly full of sugared coffee,
Eyes staring,
purple, plastic-bagged, unseeing;
Full of fluorescent lights that confuse
The circadian rhythms of its servants.
I drink my coffee, seeking to keep up
But this race is for the hardy rats
Not an ape like me
I want to lounge and snooze in the sun
At the base of a smooth-barked tree
Joe Blogs, 2017