Rush-light

Storm-light’s grey clarity and you bluster.
Syllables batter against the rear-view, cling
to the meat of my earlobes
still half-a-city from home.

Rainclouds unroll over rush-hour, its ticking
stale from storage. Mouth open, I blare My Bonny
shoulder-checking headlights
and grit twisters
at the curb.

In evening’s rush-light and traffic’s flare
your face goes bone before you drop off
leaving a body to bob
over swells of asphalt and tar,
a body for me to bundle inside.

* * *

Here's my first May Day poem.

After four years, May Day has become an apparatus that requires very little work on my part.

Sure, I hafta heave and ho to set it spinning, via coercive emails and in-person nudges to poets near and far, but after that, it whirs away all month on its own.

Best of all, it generates energy - call it heat, call it breath, call it juice. But definitely energy of some form, the product of a group of poets struggling to write publicly...

So I'm pleased to be May Day-ing again this year...and ALSO pleased, this go-round, not to be heavily knocked up (as in year two) or to have an extremely small child to cosset (as in year three).