Spring has not been a great success
In the claylands of South London
Now daubed in dog shit fauvre
And splashes of sepsis yellow
May’s the cruellest month on record
Even the crows have lost interest
“We are now approaching Balham”
The recording announces
Without sympathy or respect
Weary sheds and flailing trellis
Early cabbage and sacks of woe
Spilling bottles to Streatham Hill
Where late commuters goggle eyed
Wait outraged as stranded salmon
The lost gardens of West Norwood
Buried many Edens deep in
A conspiracy of ivy
Yield the flotsam of summers past
Plastic chairs and cricket bats
The slow rusting barbeque
That carbon dates the happiness
Of a long divorced family
In the drizzle of Gypsy Hill
Pale mansions damp with memory
Dissolve gently as pain-killers
Into the moss-choked guttering
We shunt on to Crystal Palace
Twinned with Melancholia
A murder scene with brick arches
And ornamental dinosaurs
Behind the sweating café glass
A man holds his lover closer
Than a cello, breathing her hair
For the first bowed note of summer
While on we roll to London Bridge
Their kiss blooming deep within us
Highly commended in the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition. Collected in the Templar Poetry Anthology “Peleton” 2013
Mark Fiddes 