The City Peacock
Keep returning
to your exotic blues
tail cascading
like a fishbone waterfall
over layers of alien eyes
spellbound
by your headwear
medieval and ridiculous
sprouting from a noble bonce -
a recent crowning in the maharaja’s palace?
Repeatedly inadequate
you don’t have to move
but my mind is flummoxed.
Some evenings to catch
you preening perched high
against the dappled cage wall
fig and vine shadows shifting blurs
is a revelation sustained
or just to look with questions
the way you handle such responsibility
with a brilliant form of ease.
There are never full answers.
You simply can’t tell me, us.
There’s almost too much
going on for my eyes
your natural state of being
the centre of attention without
trying the luxuriant green for example sliding
out of metallic blue a silken drama
worth a twilight sky and ocean
you have been
given implicit philosophy
and pass it on knowing your
admirers can’t really grasp the concepts.
When I’ve been drifting through
red brick streets kicking up summer muck
wanting a view out to the hills
drawn by a hunger that has no loneliness
or desperation or intrigue more a
gnawing wonder in a meagre idea: out there
are two twisted rowans near a warm boulder
or rocking stone
that shouldn’t be thriving
your metallic sheen
receding to matt black
beneath an ample chest
is the best abstract. You are wholly
abstract a morning can hardly hold
exhibiting all manner of close
perfections. Your beauty I would never want
seen through.
And those elusive eyes again -
stained glass miniatures -
hopeful followers willing to
scrape the floor set in a train
heavy with possibility
catching sunset’s pastel peach
each filament a charged fibre
as you move into the light
capturing the day’s
refinements
restoring time for the future
of all things sublime.
Bird designed in a paradisiacal storm.
Colour’s goal; a soul planning ahead.
Rich dandy quirky ignoramus
I hear your call above the mania
carrying India forever calm evenings
a mix of alarm and primitive
haunting announcement
conjuring up the leap of lime leaf leopards
tigers rising from tarmac’s heatwaves
to quietly melt away into
the next reverie.
The steamy temple ruins
festooned with ivy crumble like dry cake
you’re a caped silhouette
religiously draped when you fly to roost
altering the world by
saving someone from the drab
darkness of their own Samsa dreams.
Now you’re lifting one leg
bill prodding beneath the toe
as if dinosaur grey is an affront.
Morning maintenance or coded act
readying yourself for the quiet cloistered female
sharing the shadowy pretence?
Or is she already in on the coming scene?
Sudden spread and shudder, the tail radiant
quivering giant flower freeing the contents,
shower of fireworks
rattling shivering curved fan she has to face
but she’s into her seeds
an unimpressed
bystander given a cold role
you have to parade the visual fruit
and dark sensual tips that seem to float
above this mobile stage screen
advertisement for sex
balancing chaos and order
slowly developing a wary dance
of faith slowly round
reinforcing the madness of ritual.
Then with efficient ease
all lowers like a soft machine
and folds the lot away
the unassuming master of mesmerising display.
When you visit next
instil the green lining your deepest blue
give me your unknown song
based on breezes massaging dry long grass
convince me the goal
is a product of Nature’s chance meeting
with an elixir
then we might explore
freed silences language feeds on
the feeling I get
on the short downhill walk to your cage.
The Turin Horse
The anticipation
on Nietzsche's sofa,
the film. I keep replaying certain scenes
involving an old horse, a one-armed man,
large boiled potatoes,
dutiful daughter.
The time the well ran out of fresh water.
The knackered horse's
refusal to complain.
The man's fingers gouging out potato skin.
The idea
the howling gale ought to
win out finally.
The abandonment.
The neighbour's take
on corrupt neighbours.
Him not pissing in the well.
Coming all that way for a drink and a laugh.
The painful undressing of the father.
We watched it all unfold
in their stone cottage ripe for development.
How much deja vu
involves surviving minds. The four of us
not wanting a name for the daughter
saw them walk off, return, refugees at home.
Sonnet
You look in his mirror to see what it knows
but might not reflect. Here's a story of time
versus skin, hidden narratives the prime
mover written in curious shifting prose.
Accept the fact you're a well-known stranger
used to steaming up a lover’s phizzog.
Acknowledge light's role returning from fog
or deep water with a dry, clear game changer.
His room doubles in size, a large mirror's treat,
more world for your unmasked naked self
to claim, space where surface deceives still life
and spirit lives where sheen and brown eyes meet.
Magnified you're a miniature, always part
of someone's background, a critical portrait.
Andrew Spacey was born in Nottinghamshire, UK, close to Sherwood Forest, in 1955. He has worked as a coal miner, RSPCA animal rescue officer in London, English tutor in the Netherlands, nectarine thinner in the Kalamunda Hills, Australia and most recently as a drama teacher and ESOL tutor in the UK.
He published his first book, The Bird, The Beast and Fishes Tail (Dyllansow, Cornwall) in 1985 and has contributed many articles to magazines and newspapers over the years, featuring in the Guardian newspaper's long-running Countryside Diary.
His books also include 21 Bird Poems and Witness The Dust. Some recently published poems can be found online at The Starbeck Orion.