Amber

 

This poem was completed yesterday with the kind help of the Young Writers Group at UCL.

Amber

Use your gumption

Freewheel to junction

Warm for October

Light turns amber

Wrestle with jumper

A sweaty blunder

Head stuck under

Sleeves and collar

Washing powder

So epiphanic -

Crouching traffic

Hidden panic,

Engines manic

Parted tides pour oceanic

and rush.

Gentrified canalside:

Dieting gas-holders,

Bored buddleia,

Even the coots are coy.

Surface tension on

Stagnant water

Yet –

Slicing through the green film

An arm arches and peaks,

Rubber capped and blubber skinned

A man swims.

I grip my brakes to gaze at him,
Trawling these arteries
Past locks and quays to the heart, which is
This moment
Sticky like sap, catching insects 
In frozen lights and held breath
While I, enraptured, captive, captured
Watch it all ooze and set

     to perpetual amber  
Not perennial green.

Anya Pearson