Robert Ford
After the Fiesta
it rained ash for several hours, some still glowing, alight
at the edges as it fell, but mostly in simple grey swirls,
without choreography. Once gravity’s demands
had been obeyed, it began collecting in the gutters,
covering the empty cigarette cartons, parked cars,
the plaza, more like the shroud of Pompeii than the
sum fallout of those house-high stacks of broken pallets
and old furniture heaped on every corner, and then
ripped apart by flames, right up to the lurid effigies crowing
from their summits. The fires disappeared, the streets
filling up again with the gluey flow of feet and traffic, trying to
move on to anywhere, yet penned impatiently against itself
like bulls. Fuelled by cuba libre, and thinking that in this city,
this country, we might somehow grow up to be kids again,
we put our tongues out into the night, believing it was snow,
believing we could taste salvation itself on the sacred air.
Before Winter’s First Frost
an unprecedented silence is combing the air,
and colours are forgetting themselves below
darkening rafts of sky, a universe-deep in stars,
reaching in between the crowded roofscapes.
Perhaps a milk-jug moon is flooding monochrome
ghostlight over the cupped hands of the valley,
laying up shadows with fuse-wire precision.
At the appointed moment, a page is calmly turned,
and a hush of ice heaves crystals through
the geometry of the soil, or feathers its way
across the windows of cars on every street,
its signature written on a contract, now honoured.
Robert Ford lives on the east coast of Scotland. His poetry has appeared in both print and online publications in the UK and US, including Antiphon, Clear Poetry, Eunoia Review and Wildflower Muse. More of his work can be found at https://wezzlehead.wordpress.com/
After the Fiesta
it rained ash for several hours, some still glowing, alight
at the edges as it fell, but mostly in simple grey swirls,
without choreography. Once gravity’s demands
had been obeyed, it began collecting in the gutters,
covering the empty cigarette cartons, parked cars,
the plaza, more like the shroud of Pompeii than the
sum fallout of those house-high stacks of broken pallets
and old furniture heaped on every corner, and then
ripped apart by flames, right up to the lurid effigies crowing
from their summits. The fires disappeared, the streets
filling up again with the gluey flow of feet and traffic, trying to
move on to anywhere, yet penned impatiently against itself
like bulls. Fuelled by cuba libre, and thinking that in this city,
this country, we might somehow grow up to be kids again,
we put our tongues out into the night, believing it was snow,
believing we could taste salvation itself on the sacred air.
Before Winter’s First Frost
an unprecedented silence is combing the air,
and colours are forgetting themselves below
darkening rafts of sky, a universe-deep in stars,
reaching in between the crowded roofscapes.
Perhaps a milk-jug moon is flooding monochrome
ghostlight over the cupped hands of the valley,
laying up shadows with fuse-wire precision.
At the appointed moment, a page is calmly turned,
and a hush of ice heaves crystals through
the geometry of the soil, or feathers its way
across the windows of cars on every street,
its signature written on a contract, now honoured.
Robert Ford lives on the east coast of Scotland. His poetry has appeared in both print and online publications in the UK and US, including Antiphon, Clear Poetry, Eunoia Review and Wildflower Muse. More of his work can be found at https://wezzlehead.wordpress.com/