London In Sunlight

It seems that summer arrived today, in London - with the 20 Celsius weather. Finally! People are out, dressed like it's August in Cannes, or Miami. No time to blog, really. I was just so delighted with the sun and blue sky.

Below, an unpublished poem of mine, written last summer in Canada, to celebrate this day.

Laurentian Lakes

My brother and his wife come down to the lake
Late, vegetarians with their barbecue; but
The fuel is gone, so they drive off with my wife

In their car, leaving me alone with the lake.
Well, there are the Germans ruining the water
With their attempts to break it, and the spine-turning

Girl-guard tilted up against the shack,
Glassed-up and closed. I look out
At the copied trees, and rocks, then double-back

To her, young and caught like a hook
In the pages of a novel that might not quite be
A book, but is a story, flowing over the locks

Of each chapter-ending, that stop-start
Editors like, because it jumps like suspense;
Fish jump too, for flies; bats curve in on them.

Flies get the mouth treatment from below and above,
The downside of living at the surface of things –
Death springs from such doubled-worlds pinching in;

As words will pinch the eye, the heart.
Hans leaps again from his rowboat into black,
Yodels closed off by the audience of water

That takes his performing seal act for real, well,
For good enough. He comes back to the world,
His hair over his eyes; his companion strangles

The boy for the sheer August of the day. In three
Weeks, we’ll be in the money-world of London.
Their green car returns with fuel, with food,

And we break out a fire to grill, on the sand,
Hamburgers made from soy, images of sky
Catching in the teeth of the water, with trees.


poem by Todd Swift