The train from Barcelona has arrived:
if you look through the window, you can see its sleek
but obvious outlines

It stands there openly

We will be leaving soon:
we will be on our way, and later
after the scenery flies by,
we will arrive

and the weather will be different

They are building more flats by the railway,
and the buffet car has run out of milk:
it is not like English trains

It is a high-speed train, and it
moves quickly

What seems to be happening
is surely happening
and will probably happen again

If it does, we will tell you

In the tunnels it is dark:
outside, the sun casts shadows

And if something else is happening
that we cannot see
we do not speak about it

even if it seizes us by the throat
and shakes us till we scream

Is joy or terror passing by?
Is there an eagle in the mist
or a serpent in the falling rain?

No-one knows

Now we are nearly at Narbonne,
and most of us are asleep

It is normal:
it is what happens

A bluebell has flowered on my parents’ grave
cradled by a caressing sun
and guarded by squirrels

Now I know that you are still alive
I can rest easy:
even the naked torsos and shiny beer cans
of oblivious passers-by
no longer provoke dead anger in me

and the apparent absence of God
does not deceive me

Hidden beneath these shadowy rows of tottering tombstones
is pure gold
the essence of something unseen
in ordinary air

righteousness dancing
in the warmth of a friendly universe,
vital signs,
raw and unmistakeable

ready to break out
and expose the facade,
destroy the conspiracy,
make everything clear

In these soft, grey, collapsing January days
where dawn and dusk meet on main street at noon
too weak, too low to draw their weapons
and life seeps away
like air from a pricked balloon,

the fire fails:
faint flames lick the edges
of lime logs, traces of orange
in the colluding coals

There was a blaze here once,
not quite a furnace –
no iron forged, no tons of nails for tall
adventuring ships –
but enough to warm a visitor or two

You held out your hands sometimes and felt
some subtle change in temperature

Now I close one eye as I write:
mist spills uneasily out of my dreams,
dancing through my bones,
piercing or tickling my spirit

interrupting the invisible sun
while a cold wind across the cemetery
digs deeper

keeping the fire going
or putting it out

Failing Fire won the 2010 Norwich Writers’ Circle Open Poetry competition and appeared in the anthology with three other of my poems (and 66 by other people). It is available at www.norwichwriters.org.uk/poetry/anthology.htm