Issue 9: Adrian Balmires (for Peter Robinson)

Six Variations

for Peter Robinson at sixty

 

A pilot of silence,

the quotidian oblique,

the poet takes off from

which airport? Speke!

 

     ˜

Almost not there

yet brushstrokes remain,

indelible, on sheets

of Sendai rain.

 

     ˜

Poplars stir, stretch,

an Italian eclipse –

the naked moon brushed

by trembling tips.

 

     ˜

Shown a red card,

no justice, no mercy,

the city eyes at dusk

red mist on the Mersey.

 

     ˜

At the Apple Fair,

Love’s abundant stall,

all the poems picked,

none left to fall.

 

     ˜

After fiscal storms,

such bluster and blether,

skies return with fresh

familial weather.

Adrian Blamires has written two collections of poetry, The Effect of Coastal Processes (2005) and The Pang Valley (2010), both published by Two Rivers Press. He is currently the Creative Writing Fellow at Reading University, where he is also taking a PhD in Renaissance drama.