Continuum

Bob Nimmo

(Inspired by Auden’s ‘Who’s Who?’)

I hear the metal moth before the sun
reveals its site to mine. A slit, a streak
against th’organic blue, its tap’ring run
prompts thoughts of which the modernist won’t speak.
It circles, weaves into a clasp of grey
a moment caught prior to a loss of breath;
while conquerors planned the conquered fell to pray
before the humming turned to shrieks and death.

The vanish’d murmur’s back the gyre complete
enlarged its drone traverses time and space;
good women of far Sechuan sensed defeat,
bemoaned the fate their progeny would face.
The tragedy of yesterday impacts
when present actions frame tomorrow’s acts.

---

Searching

Bob Nimmo

She’ll watch the blossoming trams narrowing
down laddered tracks, stingray tails sucking
sustenance, winter-wrapt parcels alighting
with blunt hydraulic bursts. Around her

cars cough and buses belch as
pained pedal-pushers point
pessimistically into steamy gouts of gas
staccatoing along the sheen

of flickering neon. Pale faces form and fade, 
hands-pocketed, feet following a familiar force, 
eager to leave each new-formed space
before a tangential touch. A siren howls

warily. She sees so much and feels and tastes
scores of pressured purposes, a hundred
hurried hatchings, myriads of missed moments. While
huddled in heated haunts,

eyes abeam with dreamy needs fulfilled, lost latte
lovers linger over little lies and proud promises 
soon to be left in the scramblings of early
morning madness. 

And she content to watch.