for IM
Outside, snow falls like snow
falling. Snow falling in March
like snow falling in January
like snow fell in December.
Snowfall on the road like a road
covered in snowfall or snow
covering a road. Snow falls
like snow falls from the sky
into the rivers where it clots
among the branches like snow
clotted among the branches
in the river. Snow you've seen before,
deja snow, snow you've seen
before. These same white flakes
that drift like white flakes drift
against the house, snowing you in,
until you are snowed in by snow
like the snow that's falling now.
for BC
I was thinking of you
as I walked home through the snow.
I was thinking of you.
Sometimes I stepped on the snow
that had not been stepped on
and sometimes I shuffled the snow
that had been stepped on
and I was thinking of you.
I was thinking of you.
I have been thinking of you much.
Not thinking anything particular
about you.
I have been thinking of you much.
I was thinking of you
when it began snowing this morning
and now snowfall is coming deep.
I am thinking of you.
I have been thinking of you much
and now snowfall is coming deep.
for JMG
I would like to stop coughing now
and for Spring to arrive. Spring
would be good. A cough free Spring.
Imagine never coughing. Never
blowing a dandelion clock clean
or never going to the beach.
I think it will rain some more
then it might snow. Then hail.
This is Spring coming on like a roll
of thunder. The sand raked with waves.
All that winter is in your West
and you are waking up like a Limpet.
for JB
New York was flickering out like a faulty light,
and the skyline was tapering out like the fuse
fizzles on the opening credits to Mission Impossible.
Should you choose to accept it, even the Statue
of Liberty crooked her right arm and dropped
her torch in ocean, where it splashed and sizzled.
Simmering. The great beast in shutdown heaved
it haunches up under itself to winter it out.
The cash registers were done with singing.
On television in a bar where the neon still burned,
the English Professor was sighing his opinion
to the anchor in London who asked one more question.
Amis shrugged. And the world began to run
like peas on the deck of The Titanic. It tilted,
gaining momentum as it broke and buried them.
for AG
The prince and princess were married,
or not married, or married but only by
common-law, and the frog was involved.
They were married by the turkey who lived
on the hill with a ring on his nose at noon,
or midnight. There were stars, or sunshine,
or rainclouds, a hurricane of weather systems
applauding the marriage. They were blanketed
in snow, or swirled in dandelion seeds,
or eidered in down. The frog turned into
a handsome priest when they kissed his frock,
and the dish sloped off with the laughing dog.
This poem was commissioned for charity. You too can commission here http://www.justgiving.com/Gavin-Hudson1
Sheffield Floods — June 2007
It were pouring ahrtat sky an up frompt gutter
an ahrtat river. It were evryweer. All that watter
submergint Wicker, runnin undert arches
an all owert roads. It were all owert news.
Thi were folk on Calendar waist deep, wadin
after cars that fluated like dinghies up Brightside
t Medderall. It were all dahnstairs in the'er.
Mannequins lookt like dead bodies aftert Titanic
went down, bobbin ont surface like corpses.
All at cluathes were ruined wi sewage. Shittud
come up ahrtat drains and intat watter. It were toxic.
Two were killed, swept away bit current,
an owd bluake crossint road an a young lad
who got t close ast river erupted. I dint know em,
burra do nahr, an as quick as it come it were gone.
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.
after JMW Turner
These buckets are heavy, brim—
ful of apples from market.
The meat in my basket smells sweet
against the chimney smoke. That bloke
by the bridge, in the shadow of The Ship,
looks queer — 'sif he'd do himself in
an' 'er stubborn horse is braying, refusing
to go near the shouts of the traders.
Bet he thinks he's for the knackers.
Grey weather coming, I see.
