For my city Sheffield.
It’s autumn now in the city
Where a chill wind breathes
On solid trunks
And spreading limbs
Of proud, green growth
Their dreams will keep on rising
Showers of green falling around
Washing us clean
So long it gave us cover
Canopy, thick and tender
Sucking deep on earth’s supply
We played and sat and rested there
In the shade of shadow looming
Did the rustle and chirp seduce us?
A sleight of leafy hands
The hammer, hammer up of signs
“The greenest city in the land”
Almost, it almost drowned out
A rumble higher overhead
How long the stifling summer has been
How much was lost in the haze?
The days of running fingers through
Soft, ever-growing blades
But blowing away
As thin as air
The story of a leafy, beating heart
Stands bony, bare
Giving all the shelter now
Of a burned up umbrella
What grows among these woodlands?
What reaches for the skies?
A gleaming barrel penetrates
A fuselage of lies
And falling, falling like the leaves
Lit with autumn’s fire
Into a child’s curious eyes
Fall the incendiaries
It’s autumn now in the city
Chill wind breathes like a knife
Through leaves and all their illusions
Consume themselves hung in the light
And as the green turns
To fire
and then blood
and then
slowly
rots
Little bodies laid to rest in the open
The towers they fell from stand tall
But naked now
Brittle and grasping
Exposed
Who will keep buying
Their regret?