By: David Pike

Skies Of Westerhope

The dream was that the hay bales would take you,
To go building skies
Beyond their fields in a black and white photograph
Of yourself with the lure of that distance
Over there
Where you were told you could never reach
From a footpath undesignated
In real colour field.
Then from that same field
Past your northern self-awareness in dungarees
And the geography of no reason,
Catch the angle of exhilaration
From the difference in the road
With the best type of traffic ascending.

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Equal To The Dark

Equal to the dark
Though the brightest light in the world
Shines daily;
Equal to some days died slowly
And lost summers loved me
With incredible ease.
But now all fade, like minute marks of sunset
When clouds bank in those illusory hills
With smoke the only waving thing to see
On sky a colour of the world.

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Blue Above Maison Dieu

You look to strain and enter further into a jigsaw blue sky
Of a late February morning
And you don’t go to seek anyone out;
Emoji face and the skeleton in the marketplace
Have no appointments in Samarra.

You saw the power of the roiling clouds in the distance
Out of the corner of your eye
And did that unnerve you?
Did those safety signs unnerve you too that you ripped down
And that they put back up to preserve you?