Charles Wilkinson

sejournant

 — always the flit
    room to room skip
the light not renewed
    & the moon, its lease
dispelled to blue

                          bailing out -
                   charm’s movement
                         the view unfixed:
                   the window is
                             to jump
                               down
                                   through

& as if groundless              unyoked in air
this could be freedom        or near nothing 
to fly fast in Bede’s sparrow & no trace
stayed in the hall: wing tip in rising smoke 



The End of Acrophobia

tilt & haze
& then a still chair on the move
travelling
across the stationary carpet to nowhere:
imbalance -
a way of being at variance with the world;
a changing
prospect inflicts fresh inclinations;
yet upright
we must welcome the perils of falling.
  
vertigo
not a hell of stuck radiance: 
all the old
objects defining the self.
a loud click
snaps the spell of stasis
summoning
a desire to climb wild & higher;
to forget
the enticement of stable ground

embracing
a lack of poise is our heady risk:
a promise
of a pocket earth cupped in the hand —
though the light
is bent, immixed in riddle-dark
& no fixed
tempo for crystal spheres.
we will trade
terra firma for the end of acrophobia
Hail rocket!
every adventure involves ascent



The Courier

collects a card
   & within hours 
      money moves
         faster than isobars: 
             an instant’s transfer,  
                for they have the pin;
                    she’ll scarcely credit
                        the time of withdrawal
                            to far traceless numbers —
 
checking the tale
   will bring tears &
      a cleared account;
          an old woman recalls
             a moment on a doorstep,
                her hands wide open
                    in draining daylight,
                       the snarl of an engine
                           starting, & the man
                              with his visor down —
                                   the black motorbike
                                      amiss in a running dusk.  



‘chagrin’

sorrow & lost landscape swooning high hedgerow
      the birdsong polyphonic retuned to dawn
sun-striped pasture time of the smaller field
   corn stook-gathered an early morning gold
luminous last threads left by the harvesters

house of childhood & honeystone stored sun-warmth
    the gate framing an entrance to a garden’s wild lawns
flower clouds half-forgotten sprays colour blown
   a zigzag light through foliage water-skip on rock
so sadly with shadow toying on gloss of home

Charles Wilkinson’s work includes The Pain Tree and Other Stories (London Magazine Editions). His poems have been in Poetry Wales, Poetry Salzburg (Austria), Shearsman , The Reader, New Walk, Magma, Under the Radar, Tears in the Fence, Scintilla, Envoi, Stand, The Warwick Review, Otoliths, Snow lit rev and other journals. A pamphlet, Ag & Au, came out from Flarestack Poets in 2013. He has two collections of weird fiction and strange tales, both from Egaeus Press: A Twist in the Eye (2016) and Splendid in Ash (2018). His full-length poetry collection, The Glazier’s Choice, is due to appear from Eyewear in 2019. He lives in Powys, Wales.
 
 
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