BAD POTATO WEATHER

The nightjars are blacking the sun out
with rainclouds of feather. Poor scratching
in the waterlogged soil for lungworm
and beetle. The potassium's peaking
round mid-afternoon, making sailors afraid
of lithium in spinach barrels. Flood warning
by dawn. This is bad potato weather. The kind
to sink dormice and make millionaires 
of stoats. In ferns, toads burp at frogs spawning
in rivers that burst, coursing new valleys
of acid erosion. Stone turns to leek in the riptides.

DISPATCHES

The folk round here travel unshackled.
The roads are long as microfiche tape.
The views are wide as a Disney viewfinder.
The views are flat as an unfilled crepe.

This is typed on hotel paper.

Norwich is right in the middle of Norfolk.

Is that why Ips and Suf are the same?

Is that why Sufwich and Ipsfolk?

I counted a hundred or so panes of glass.
Behind them a hundred or so strawberry plants.
My colleague thought potatoes for this time of year.
I worried that we would be eaten by ants.


My year in Provence was nothing like Sufwich
The Norfolk air is making me sick.
I couldn't count all the strawberries in Ipsfolk.
Norwich is a potato painted on brick.