Charles Wilkinson

Migrants

                                                       love not cancelled     before speedwell’s
                                          wayside wreckage     or while the hedgerow 
                                       is rife with yarrow     black-eyed susan’s 
                                    so late in bed     phlox & clematis bloom
                               swifts axe-wheel above     eat the airborne spiders
                        strong colour’s in the rose     hides in the red-wall shade
                      swallows lowflash fields     the martin sings in the shell  
                           green in the palm’s leaf     the lines not curled in rust 
                               wait ‘til the birds have left     the tree-ribs stripped of song
                                  save some soft-seed words     & ground to grow them in
                                     rise upon the flyway         pulled by magnetic force 
                                       migrants return again       on invisible currents of love      
                                          the ancient songs resume    bright in the most dun air                                    
                                                  retuned by the lilt of earth    skymarked  moon & sun  



Storm Sisters       

                     cloud, black     
 edged with chrome-light
     plants a white      
                  tree, upside down
 & earthed          live -      
        feeds on currency:
        domination
        in droplets,
        a finance of
        high energies
moved by more than 
blue sky thinkers 

                           markets cooler
than thundersnow  
                                  stormspotter & inter-
contintental

shock waves
fulminate in the
financials 
                          &
                   then decay to sound
                   wave    heard   as    brontide


travelling wide     collects & disperses
Caribbean blow   ends up stateside   
 cash low     on the ground
    picks up      smashes
      a house    or  two 
        no need  to lighten 
          with old flash
          stormsisters: 
         gustando &
          a perfect
          steam devil
         calm    in 
           the   eye
           twist-
            er

Charles Wilkinson’s work includes The Snow Man and Other Poems (Iron Press) and The Pain Tree and Other Stories (London Magazine Editions.) Recent poems have appeared in Poetry Wales, Poetry Salzburg , The SHOp, Gargoyle, The Raintown Review, Shearsman, The Reader, New Walk, Magma, Under the Radar, Tears in the Fence, Envoi, Orbis, The Warwick Review, and other journals. A pamphlet, Ag & Au, came out from Flarestack Poets.
 
 
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