Tension, Hackney Downs, Easter 2012

For days it hasn’t rained.
The newspapers celebrate exaggeratedly,
Pictures of Blackpool, Brighton, Bournemouth,
Hotter than Barcelona, Lima or Roma.

The kids are released for Easter,
A circle of faces pass a draw for this feast
Hairless male chests display their best poses.
The girls raise the volume and camp up their silliness.
Unaware, Turkish boys argue angrily over angles and inches.
Is it post? Is it post and in?
“There ain’t no posts, cuz,
It’s bags.”

A mad woman barks at the edge of the park,
Her eyes are narrow slits flashing anger,
Her mouth, hooked like a sturgeon’s gob,
Bellows out defiance.
Her minder applies restraint, pulls her hand.

The flowers soak up the sunshine
And flout their early blooms
Children quarrel.
Adults quarrel.
I am unable to relax.
No April showers to wash away the tension.
The things I have done tense my muscles,
The lessons I have learned stoop my shoulders,
And tighten the knots in my back.

As if by chance,
(though nothing happens without intention somewhere)
My phone rings. My friend on the line.
I surrender, lie back on the dry grass,
And, supine, see up into the wide reaches
where miles of blue sky reach wider
than the domed bounds of my sight.
High hints of much more than this square plot of terrain.

Aeroplanes cut the airy way,
The Earth turns heavily as it has done for millennia,
Every dog will have its day.