poems by owen lucas

Further down the carriage, a man
talks about agoraphobia and rubs
his choux pastry eyes red.
A handbagged sad sack mother
arranges her chins into a sulk.
The train makes touchdown on
a blunt breast of land, its roll
around the earth like a torrent
falling whitely into a space.
Frost still pools in the ditches,
the face of the handbag lady
numbly jumps up, the grey hair
of a hundred brokers lapsing
into coma falls down through
the air in battered clumps.
Morning rain on the damp paper
makes a sad grey cauliflower
with an inky, stood-on face.
The fens look rusted blue,
and I think of Granchie
in a ward in South Wales,
his head red and heavy
staring brick wall into white.