Midwinter (Parts 3 & 4)

3. Housemartins

When the housemartins’ bungalow fell from her attic,
cradling its four pink, helpless children,
and she recognised the owl
whose screech woke them up,
the four winds plotting from a secret cell;

because she couldn’t predict the timing
of the explosions which haunted her,
or plan the fate of a rush-hour tube train,
four children and their unseen bosses
dreaming of burning crosses,
of parental losses;

while I flew across oceans with old warriors,
sharing new quests,
repairing the wrong nests;

when the small chunk of Earth she owned
crumbled through her tight fingers,
melting on the damp patio,

she cried all the keys of her grand piano,
and the housemartins scratched in the eaves,
trying for more helpless, pink children.

4. Impacts

The driver was an old salt, a 55 year old from a
football town – Portsmouth, he told me in a
fragmented, distant way. It was like
watching a Virgin Pendolino cross a
valley from far upstream, listening to the
echoed rattle from an ancient bridge.
I kept up the emails, for a little while
reminding him of his faultless killing.
Then he changed his username and home and
dissolved somewhere into the sea.

I wrote a short letter, well I typed one, to
her mother in Frasseto, Corsica, the little
hill-village with the single bar, islands away
from the one where her husband stays asleep.
She wrote a long note back in ink:
there was no blame, only regret;
no pointed finger, just warm old arms reaching to be
reached for. But she wouldn’t, couldn’t come
to the party: she didn’t know her daughter
any more than she knew which font I’d used.

Here are some people from the 18:05 from Waterloo:
3 whiplash injuries from the braking, one severe,
taken care of by an internet accident law firm;
a small team of marine palaeontologists, who
missed the former Institute’s first annual conference,
including a tapas lunch at the Que Pasa,
but they claimed the tickets back, on expenses;
a local press photographer, off-duty, able to
clamber from the window, snap the train’s face.
Later I bloodied his while the timetables redrew theirs.

I want to hug thanks to the forensics guys, though:
They worked all night, hushed in sterile white
body bags, asexual, setting up the night cameras
with detached professionalism, stroking my shoulders.
They helped orange police to herd the platform,
like stern, smart sheepdogs they turned two boys away,
who stumbled off, laughing into their new journey.
I didn’t open my mouth to scream at those kids,
or thank the guys because, as someone has
told me since, now I only speak in lines from poems.