Wild Court

An international poetry journal based in the English Department of King’s College London

Three poems by Andrew McNeillie

Spring Offensive

A day to go and it will be June.
Yet we’re in March-to-April weather still.
Will we get there in time?
All the forecasts say
it’s going to happen soon.

Spilling off the jetstream
to the east, ill winds sweep
drizzle into our minds.
It seems in keeping with the times
that nothing is as it should be.

31 May 2023

Old Man

The thing is, now, I go there any time.
I don’t even have to leave home.

Which is as well as I’d find it beyond me,
clambering those rocks, to reach the sea.

I go where I go by memory solely.
It limits me, surely.

But there are blessings to count.
It’s so much easier to get about.

In a moment I might be anywhere,
or wherever I’ve been before.

And with anyone I’ve ever known
and no one can tell where I am or when.

Or understand how they can’t begin
to compete for my attention.

Visitation

As when it snows at night
and life’s brought to a halt,
the power is out,
lines down, and freezing air
clouds your breath.
Or as, from the storehouse
of dreams, she comes back to you.

Randomly, as she used to be,
as you were both once.
And you ask yourself,
what are dreams, and why aren’t they
available on demand?
As if for the same reason,
it snows here rarely.


Posted:

in

Author: