Two Short Pieces :)

[Robin Forester]

Pink Spinning Top.

The dead centre, your instinctive
whirl of gymnastic poise.
Between my thumb and finger
and a click of the two, you fly.
Your clear, streamlined angle,
And the subtle axis with which you reply.
Broaching the edges of a dinner plate.
Famously, cautiously, unaware
of what the outcome may be,
like a coin pirouetting in the air.
Or a bag caught in the breeze.

(Working with internal rhyme here, trying not
to right so much direct emotional work, instead
this is an implication, an ambiguous piece.)

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January, 2012.

A day of heavy rain ushered in the new year,
An unexpected guest, spattered with water,
Almost over eager to fill the time frame.

While infant lips bake, plastic infant promises
Tiny plastic vessels negotiate the flooding gutters,
Rain bombed the shores, beat hope into the virgin drum.

A radio announcer predicts more on its way today,
Precipitation, I grab at an umbrella in anticipation.
As the light begins the dwindle and fall over London.

The routine of time, the familiar waft of fumes.
The comforting ebbing away, the day-to-day.
Yes, it is the new year, I begin to count down

The long, journeying moments before we dare to hope
again, dare to dream to make a change, before my
time is up and all I am becomes; a fossil in the ground.

(I'm a great believer in spontaneity. If a work isn't
near completion after two or three re-writes I generally
can it... this is an example of that maxim; first draft.)