Robert Verdon, #342, Over and Over

voice an overblown muted trumpet

shredding the afternoon

drowning in doubt

train vibrating the station like a pea in an old whistle

you leap in front

and then we are in another time

floating to earth

high above Staffordshire flat and patchwork

it is a calm spring day

as if I could paint and trace and become each unseen pendulous leaf and floret

we spin parachuteless into the glare of Blakemere Pond

you leap in front

we lie flat on the tracks as the train thunders overhead

as in a 1950s English war movie

trapped in glamour

there is a tiny spider on my steamed-up computer screen

or rather holographic display

or is it a real spider

I cannot tell dream from waking, like the D.T.s

I hear the voice in my cranium

shrieking to get out

out out out out out out out syncopated as a tabla

but there you are, in a hair-spring of fur tagging my camellia bush

or on the moon, for all I know, I have no perspective now

it is not drugs or madness or a daydream, just a moment’s dread

I lift my head and start over