Darlington, Sunday, Bequest & Next of kin
by Nathan Hamilton
[ poetry - september 05 ]
Darlington
Engraved: your name
And numbers - crowded
By a bowed clutch of day trippers -
Should speak to me.
Weathered plots, primly dotted
Around this quiet quarter,
Mark life too discreetly.
White clouds above should be
The wings of a huddle of angels.
They drift; not angels at all
But poised water
Waiting to cool, and fall.
Sunday
The bells now ring in white they ring
a rhyme they chime a ringing bell a
chiming bell the rhyme it rings the
ringing bell it chimes a bell it sings
from churches chimes the brain a bell
in church towers chiming calling
church towers calling.
Next of kin
Again, outside hospital, near dawn,
We caught the dark mountain of cloud
Shifting behind an ink black house.
Rumbled, it looked shame-faced
For what it had in store:
A phone chirped up: The Ward,
Requesting us close by. We shuffle inside.
Another chapter closing too quickly
On the fourth floor; brutal
And miserably rigged.
Bequest
You left me this:
A cold, yellowed waxwork,
Hollowed out and hard to recognize
In a coroner's tetchy charge.
It visits me, this time,
Over the station side,
Waiting; watching trains
Funnel towards a white horizon
On rusting rails.
