Poems

POETRY LESSON

My boys can write,
spilling images like bits of glass,
jagged, catching the light.

I give advice:
'Always start
with something you've really felt; make images
from things you know'-leaning on desks,
moving around with suggestions; then when I try

what I feel seems shapeless, what I know
so filled with its own shape, so dense
with its own colour, nothing I do
can give it edge or light.


TODDLER WITH FLOWERS

Thomas stoops,
squats carefully, gropes in the runny mud:
...