Funny little wind-up soul –
your coil-spring ascension’s a call
to daylight, alarming and comical.
As if you were climbing a rope
of notes, your wittering treble
heli-resurrects to a high middle-
distance on a fluster of wings –
a chaffering gizmo to riddle
the quiet’s uncertain interval.
This mimic rendition of a round-up
reel’s as long as it’s singable,
as high as it’s hung on invisible
threads, like some winching elastic
stretched till it pings, and you tumble
to begin again, begin again: no trouble.
Angela Leighton’s sixth collection of poems, Something, I Forget, will be published later this year
