Hedonist & Sasquatch

May weather brings lambs
to daisy hems,
sunshine twists on bracelets
like pond skaters skipping over trout.
Afternoon ice cream
jellybeans on cheeks,
there is no cauldron more glorious or alive
than a river in Spring gloss.
Streak of light
putting ghosts in cribs
and nudging lurking shadow into the mouth
of Venus.

Frosted glasses of plum wine
spill over hampers of mutton and berries,
as damsels in undress grope in barns
like excited lizards on railway sleepers.
Neither bully nor Death
has a page in this scene;
jam scones on a Sunday teatime
swat the hammerheads into gasoline coma.
Dried mud paths lead to a
mullet brown harbour,
where chip shops and plastic buckets
turn the air into a potent fog,
pickled lungs never been so glad
tho’ never as full as memories eye.
Those furnace fields still ablaze
long after the gates fell.
Western man in a painting
from the East…

@Steven Francis poems 2009