Eternal Spring

I walk through the park’s greenery,
blink at the limpid cool of the water
in the sudden burst of sun,
as if it were the first time.

I cut through an alleyway,
pass terraced cottages,
walk under the arch,
up the city’s incline,
as if I have never ever done so.

As I press on, the streets open up,
and suck me in,
as if I have never, in the glare,
ever seen their mishmash filmy coloured blur.

The sun chilled in the still evening air,
I retrace my steps through the bustling market,
down the alleyway,
across the park, glance at its trees,
sweeping green and glistening pond.
I let myself be swallowed within its virginal embrace,
and the thousand other times,
as if I have never, through the tears and the sin,
and bewildered staring eyes,
ever strolled through the park,
fresh and full in the bountiful newness of spring.

And Again Dust

The driveway, pummelled by relentless heavy tyres,
yields up ghosts.
Below today’s shifting tarmac
lies another age’s stone-embedded off-white mortar,
crumbling, I brush up, with dislodged pebbles,
ready for rubbishing.

It collapses into elemental dust
workmen once made pebble-dashed solid,
curling into faces and clothes.
White smoke drifts into my nostrils, and throat,
chokes.

The disintegration of their works,
the funeral pyre of that moment vanishing into air
recreates their animation, and sweat,
constructing into firm matter
a time and space
from the fumy grains they had at hand.

All Her Dreams

That’s where they said goodbye,
and the gangway he walked down,
never turning round.

They stood close, she said,
he didn’t stir,
till she gave him his cheek-kissed adieu.
He turned, ticket in hand,
joined the long, long queue
travelling to distant lands.

He never looked back.
She left,
the busy, busy world of journeys,
and trysts,
to others.

She said goodbye,
to nestling lovers’ bye-byes
and, their swift welcome back.
She’s missed that train.

Alan Hardy has for many years run an English language school for foreign students (in UK). He’s been published in such magazines as Ink Sweat & Tears, The Candyman’s Trumpet, Envoi, Iota, Poetry Salzburg, The Interpreter’s House, Littoral, Orbis, South, Pulsar, Lothlorien, 100subtexts, Fixator, Chewers, Fevers of the mind, Suburban Witchcraft and others. Poetry pamphlets Wasted Leaves (1996) and I Went with Her (2007). Though he has just recently started submitting again (after a little pause), he has always kept writing (and reading) poems.