Poetry Corner

Sailing

All day, the clouds have scoured across the sky
In time-lapse, sucking squalls of spring wind round
Umbrella Town. The late editions drone:
The Severn Bridge is closed, a man has drowned
In Salcombe, sailing too close to the storm.
The glass-gowned city towers tilt and shake
Like sunlit spinnakers across the waves
Of daylight. Underground, a busker rakes
A squeezebox, stirring memory with an old
Rod Stewart tune — crowds cheering on a quay;
The Spitfire-thin red line; we can’t forget
And yet: and yet.
No rain. In Tripoli

Sand-hidden missiles stir like ack-ack guns
And scan the sky for jet-wings in the sun.