DAVID PAUL JONES
Looming, a lead-grey blanket
hanging over blue-milk evening light.
In cooling electric air
an urgent blackbird bound for a home
hidden in the waiting hedge.
The world withholding breath.
A distant growl; the breeze stiffens,
the rain-crescendo starts.
Drains delight in baby-gurglings,
roof-moss droppings smear the panes
of the back-door porch.
Across the street, slates are steaming,
the gutter a gargoyle, incontinent.
Ripples chase each other down the hill;
street-borne rivers meet, swerve round tyres,
threaten to breach their kerbstone banks.
Diminuendo now, the spilling eases.
House-lights flicker, then fail; dark descends.
In the dim unrefrigerated stillness,
the flare of a match,
lamplight licking kitchen tiles.
‘Lamplight’ was highly commended in the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition, April 2012.
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