Issue 32: Peter Robinson

Rosebay Willowherb

A chill wind’s blowing from the north;

it’s bringing stubborn memories,

trans-Pennine railway journeys

even as these waterfowl

flaunt their green credentials

and the fumes of cars

(including ours)

rise from causeway corridors.

But at least this washed-out spring

will bring home all its colours,

like the rosebay willowherb

wildly waving as trains pass

from rail-track raised embankments

down where the seeds had blown,

and I’d caught sight of them

back with heartstrings tautening.

With nothing to prove and no designs

on anyone, willowherb thrives

wherever a wind has gusted

and thrown back on my own devices,

desires, I see how it survives

given the slightest noticing

from Garforth far as Manchester,

or something along those lines.

Operation Anniversary

Laburnum tendrils come again

in later sun and storm light.

I’m out running errands, layering landscapes.

Rain glints on the yellow droplets

this washed out, tropical-green spring day.

Then along with broken spheres

of half-blown dandelion clocks,

the laburnum, come again,

reminds me it’s been thirty years.

Later, lying here

with a weak gleam at the window,

I find those shiverings of laburnum

reach my way, reminding me

how fast or slow, looking after itself,

time’s bound to get on without us …

and taken back over this thirty-year

reprieve, it’s like I had pre-lived it,

already done my dying.

It’s like there really were nothing to fear.

13 May 2023

Desperate Measures

for Peter Makin

Convalescent from the long disease

being just another of those bare

forked animals taking exercise,

again I’m lining up my landscapes,

aligning them with thoughts

to see what’s not seen in this scene –

like Foxhill House against warm sky,

mildew and salts on polychrome brickwork,

now a law school with its laws

(the thin or thick rules we’ve to live by)

has me judging distance from lined trees

or lampposts set at intervals and these

in the Foxhill brickwork’s polychrome,

elaborate, unnecessary shapes

flecked by wildings’ wind-sown latest green

on what was Alfred Waterhouse’s home …

Yet still at that patterning, design, that care,

I’m puzzled why polychrome brickwork can’t mean –

seeing as there’s meaning everywhere.

Peter Robinson has published aphorisms, prose poems, short stories, fiction and literary criticism. For some of his poetry and translations he has been awarded the Cheltenham Prize, the John Florio Prize, and two Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Recent publications include Retrieved Attachments (Reading: Two Rivers Press, 2023) and, with Roberta Antognini, the Collected Poems of Giorgio Bassani (New York: Agincourt Press, 2023).

Copyright © 2024 by Peter Robinson, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author