Greg McLaren #1 Standing to Penrith

Standing to Penrith

            “These shoes are legit, true.

            I think so.”  

                              His head craned over,

looking at the pics,

            hand covering the phone like

            protecting a pin.

            She fingers across photos

            a couple in steel framed chairs

            in a cafe courtyard

                                     like but not

            Bar Italia.

                             Then the same

            people again, but aged.

            “Like Star Wars but every lightsaber strike

            is a Michael Jackson noise.”

            An apple from a bag,

                                              it looks

almost square. The bag

            labelled Blackheath, B, then obscured.

            Cover your cough

            or sneeze please.

            Late light is a lot like early light,

            falling onto the flattened land

creekside in the wood.

                                               And makes his hair

            look translucently white,

            not grey, not silvered, and the leather

            jacket’s vinyl.

            A yellow pacer, marking up

            something in a paperback book

            that doesn’t seem to be puzzles.

Her hair and eyes look like

            Rowland S Howard’s.

                                              “I’ve been

            contemplating suicide.”

            The getting-of and offering of seats

is competitive and refusal scores a frown

you can hear in a change of tone.

            FULL STRENGTH SCAFFOLDING

            FULL STRENGTH SCAFFOLDING

            FULL STRENGTH SCAFFOLDING

           

            Have you been injured at work?

            We turn lives around