Simon Leonard

Cologne, Germany

An ex-poet until the next one comes along, Simon Leonard spends most of his time teaching English in a Secondary school. Examples of his work can be found in Envoi, Orbis, Ink, Sweat and Tears and Nine Muses Poetry.

No time to wax lyrical

Today the wind doesn’t matter –

I won’t be flying.

Stray planes scar

a purposeless sky.

Today the rain can do what it wants;

I count the population of drops

on my squared metre of outside.

The clock Is a childless swing,

losing interest in momentum; effort,

a toy tractor,

still spraying a field

in case of summer.

Aliens may rock up, eventually,

to find radio stations playing lists

of automatic hits.

Last winter we trekked

from Vilanova to Sitges by the coast;

enjoying the familiar as a gift,

wrapped in the gauzy nostalgia

of tender light on a motionless sea.

Vague as the warmth

of the same diffuse sun,

a promise of itself, we picked our way

over crumbly knuckles of stone,

roots elbowing their way

out of clotted earth.

By night the sea became

an aluminum stretch –

placid fingerprint of moon

on shivering membrane.

Last decade’s decorations led us

up the jerky-motion newsreel

of life greeted in a street.

All so fragile without knowing

what true fragility was.

On the last day of Pompeii,

people probably got up,

looked out the window, checked the weather,

made plans, were overcome

by the certainty that all

their carefully constructed

normality suddenly didn’t matter.

This is not Pompeii.

There will be another winter.

We will discover small flowers, still peeking

out of rocky fists.