Moth
I glimpsed a moth this evening, flittering at the window.
I thought I’d never see a moth again
apart from the ones I kill – else they’d be running the place
from carpet headquarters which is inconvenient,
because you don’t want caterpillars crawling up your walls,
however small, when you’re trying to persuade someone
to come and live with you: that it could work out really well
if only they’d forget about the lie you told them –
oh and I saw two pipistrelles, zipping through the dusk, as if they
were having fun but there are hardly any insects any more.
Where have the blue-bottles gone?
B Road Dawn
How to digest all the aeroplane food
is the question
they’re discussing on this radio show
that you never really listen to
but somehow you do
and you’re taking it in
while the windscreen’s being scratched
by the blade you should’ve changed
because that’s where you are in your life right now
on your own
in the sheeting, sheeting rain.
All the way to Sydney with no touch down;
the stuff they’d have to feed you
to keep you awake
when you’d think you were asleep
and now – there ahead by the five-bar gate –
an early morning squirrel’s
just starting to leap
to dazzle-cross the tarmac o no stay right there
don’t start turn start to run back thwack!
its tiny body goes
thwack beneath me as the news carries on
about the protest
all the protest going on
about whatever it’s about
and now this shadow.
______________
Elaine Beckett’s 1st full length collection ‘Sea Creature Regrows Entire Body’ (2021) is
available from Verve Poetry Press. She was awarded a Faber New Poets prize in 2016 for
her debut pamphlet ‘Faber New Poets 13’. Elaine originally trained as a composer and
holds a PhD from the University of York. She was born in London, now lives and works in
Dorset. www.elainebeckett.com
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