James Robertson

The Words (1)

Words are stretched out by the score
All along the scoop of the phone wires.
A poet parks her car beneath them,
Is puzzled by their numbers, listens
For a moment to their small insistences.
Unknown to her, more and bigger words are massing
Just over the hill. They threaten something,
Soon they will rise and billow
Into a single devastating multiplanestrike.
Or, clouds of them will burst like pillows
Down the lum when she expects them least.
Or, a single screeching word will strike her head
Or chap her door at night, and then drop dead.
Soon there will be nothing to see but words
Filling the rubbed-out sky, the land will be covered
With their throaty ruffling, and the gaps
That dance between them will be white paths
Leading to nowhere.

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