Catch
as Catch Can
We’re
out here now, playing games on Primrose Hill,
giddy
gambolling lambs in sunshine, chasing thrills,
racing
breathless with each other to pluck daffodils
as Wordsworth’s
clouds gather in old Jack and Jill.
Ray croons
sons asleep, old Waterloo underground
lullabies
of soft swept rivers by bright banks bound.
They sickle
skywards, coasting, clean city and town,
murmur
half a sixpence is better than half a crown.
Penny
Lane’s pretty nurse sews cinnabar poppies
by Threadneedle
Street, thumbs silk-mask glossy
pages,
cover to cover, scanning copy for fine print
dashing
away with a smoothing iron to press lint.
Peter
Pan flies above Kensington begging for claps
from
Neverland’s bright young things; doffs cap,
still
believes in his Tinkerbell, she’ll yawn, stretch,
smile
at Autumn chills, wink, then flicker and fetch
her
book of spells. And we won’t get fooled again,
still it's time to play, Nana, sip sweet champagne,
it
was the lark not the nightingale, but which tune
resonates with her setting suns or rising moons?
Hide
or seek, ladders or snakes, maybe sardines,
pressed
up tight together with no room to breathe,
hearts
pounding in black’s silent muffled shadows
quietly
tense, musn’t be caught; it grows, it grows.
Pepper
strikes up when the end is getting very near;
we’re
out here still, all singing, all dancing, years
of
in and out the dusty bluebells, all rings of roses
with
a shout, puffed out, it please someone choose
catch
as catch can. Silence weeps for she does know
when such a lovely audience will surely have to go.
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