Peter Philpott

Ashen


Evening opens into pale shinings
vast deserted spaces lit through pigeon flight
into occasional forays across the street: ah
children, darlings, your little shoutlings
are like sparrows, white bursts of paper, a thin
pearly line of cloud. Nearer the hot sounds breath
comes no nourishment: cheese and onion flavours, sucrose
and saccharin. A single puffy dark cloud grows and looms
the concrete glowing for the last time against such a sky
and the lid settles on the day. You turn
for supper and a drink into The Playhouse or Macdonalds
buying release from the shifts of light
through noise, dirt, liquid, others wrapt
but not in you nor the immense process
threatening us all.