#149 Kevin Brophy 'Found:'

#149 ‘Found:’

a green and yellow jewel beetle

asleep on the ground,

a Fantale still in its wrapper,

words in chalk on a gutter,

an eyeless origami frog,

a book that began with once

and ended with after,

a crow looking at the ground,

a boy shouldering despair,

a girl prickling with swagger,

a fresh whole meal crust

on the ground,

ten deflated footballs,

two young men cutting through the school,

and the question, what does a goonie do?,

a sentence in an interview,

I am in a graveyard at the moment,

a woman who said she can drive

each day

for a few moments only,

a boy giving the slices of banana

from his sandwich to a girl, surprised,

and those two young men cutting through,

one of them carried a long white staff

as if it was a sword,

the sun splashing down in a pastel sea

of adoring clouds, without a word,

a girl fishing through a box of prizes,

and another girl discussing consequences

with the Principal,

all this given richly, freely, godlessly,

all this torn from a larger more difficult drama,

all this and the graveyard too, and the young men

in football jumpers cutting through

on their way through this poem’s last breath

as it holds up a brief hand to them in passing.