Bard in the Square
He drank himself bronze: thirteen bucketfuls
of old pennies, fused and plunked
onto a pedestal, silenced of his utterances.
Love or loathe, you can’t ignore this metal mute.
Cameras snap like dogs at him, winds whirl
and growl around him, gulls and pigeons splat him.
He’s as cold as the November he sits in;
you want to throw a coat across his shoulders;
come June he’ll beg for a cool lager.
Moon-eyed, he glints on crowds
in and out the mall; if you’re low neck-lined,
long-legged and short-skirted, look up,
see his moons beam.
As with his verse, he lures and stirs and foxes.
He’s the Uplands man, who shipped himself
to a plenteous land and watched from the aft
his orchard dwindle to a pip; he took with him
the flesh of its fruit and choked on it.
(c) Esmond Jones 2004
***
Making Slow Progress
The sodden sod squelches, sucks
at the gumboot, wraps the calf in rubber.
The flannel sock tightens round the skin
that itches like a healing scab.
Overhead, a flotilla of geese
scratch the sky; knee-jerking each step,
I’m mocked for my lack of mobility.
(c) Esmond Jones 2004
***
Hot at Lords
Slam the long swelter of afternoon
to the boundary of your mind;
hold this moment when the ball
is sliced off the edge of the bat,
upwards and backwards,
then falls toward unmanned space;
follow the fielder as he back-peddles
and fills the vacant portion of field,
reaches beyond his arm’s stretch,
picks the ball from its loop,
like a ripe peach from a swaying branch.
(c) Esmond Jones 2004
