Canada Water & North north west
by Andrew O'Donnell
[ poetry - november 05 ]
Canada Water
St Johns: a b-side of a destination
for all born with the pocket dirt of The Queen.
You’re watching your uncle’s hands
on the steering wheel as you work the pedals,
manoeuvring the pick-up across
the gravelly sand by the frozen lake,
towards a forest of faces. This is years
before the current of her (seeing lipstick
in ketchup) at Terminal 3.
*
On the tube route home, she’s all over him.
Most concretely on that last trickling bend south
from Heathrow to yours. At home he’s inside her
well before the thought of it being best to nip down
to the shops for protection. Because the score was raw
cardboard, smoked up without tobacco and it set him off
reeling for the whole reception - Something she did.
He can’t put his finger on it, but how recovered
she is, how bloody beautiful. Someone asked him to dance,
to stay, and it was all yeah and yeah. So now, here -
he brings up hi-balls of water for what this body
just gave him and what it gave her; ten days, burned
to this one. Not unfitting, somehow - This mood:
a Heavy Rock duo with their bootlegs showing.
*
Back at the lake your uncle takes a break.
Drinks rum. His club-holding hands
around the hexagonal seventies glass.
He takes out a pack of cards and thumps them
on the bonnet. Somehow you know
that at no time in the future will he ever ask you
who cheated who, or even if the game
was rigged, or existed at all. That we can’t be faithful
to much more than a sleeve- “1986-2001”
North north west
Carry
that banner on
some wet religious day -
canvas sliding on drifting poles -
red rain.
*
Hometown
graveyard next to
where we played hot football,
t-shirtless, and over the fence -
lost balls.
*
Confess
if you will, must -
but when your day comes to
go - leave me only slick bites,
weirs.
*
The girl
opens a box,
rests it on the chalk lines,
the nightwind staggers, blows leaves through
pizza.
*
For gym
he goes further
than the others, strips down
to nothing along the light-split
hallway.
*
The stream
at the crammed back
of the playground; kids slide
down its furry mudbank, away
from snow.
*
Damn this
night-tired song,
wrapped up in Thunderbirds,
ditched in the piano’s legless,
soft keys.
*
Rubbish -
on days hurling
itself around a field,
forgets the surrender, the wrists
of leaves.
*
A lathe
of looks, grasses -
this game played on a slug
of a shout - rules spin and wear down
till dark.
*
Slow moor -
slow moor - slow moor,
rock sky - Slow moor - rock slow -
Slow moor - sky - Slow moor - rock this sky
to sleep.
