Tom Pickard Poems

simplicity
say sleep
...

A lapwing somersaults spring
flips over winter and back.
...

at first they recce,
easy,
around the edge of  breath
...

a wren,
perched on a hawthorn
low enough to skip
the scalping winds,
...

When my lover became my enemy
I made my bed amongst winds
and drove the old road 'till my heart crashed.
...

you gave me a white rose
put the lamp on the stove
it caught fire
...

a mass of moth-eaten cloud
threadbare and spun across
a bullish moon
...

in paradise
I was ordered
to improvise
...

there is something so familiar
in what is said I stop and listen,
...

A lapwing somersaults spring
flips over winter and back.

After a fast walk up long hills, my limbs
the engine of  thought, where burn
bubbles into beck and clough to gill,
beneath a sandstone cliff  balanced on a bed of shale
and held from hurtling by Scots pine
that brush a scrubby sky with cloud snow scutters,
I found a place to sit
by snapping watta smacking rocks
and wondered — how would it be for you?

And so, alone,
un-alone even, in my anger,
bring you here.
...