(Listen to the poem here)
First buy a ring cake,
which you will not eat.
A chance to buy a flavour you don’t like.
Cut out the middle hole, be small
and try to take forever. Think that
a mouse is lapping up Sumida river.
Discard the cake, carry the hole,
use all your fifty fingers, carefully,
within the skein there can be dreams.
Put in a baking tin.
If you don’t have one
put it in one you haven’t got.
Ease breath into a straw.
Stretch out the hole until
the tin is full of emptiness.
Place in the oven.
Sit on the floor and watch.
Are those clouds floating through your kitchen?
It will not tell you when it’s ready,
one day it’s Spring
and then one day it’s Summer.
Wait gently under
time’s slow waterfall.
Untry to be unwashed by it,
unwish yourself from catching
fish and figments in the air
until your hands stop grabbing
and your fingers are just ripples
upon which you float out
into the flow of things.
And then you’ll hear
the sound of wings.
Look to your window:
the seasons and the world
do not come knocking
at our front doors.
Two swallows will be there.
Summer has surely come.
Clap with one hand.
Half-self congratulations.
It’s done.
Serves none.
Phillip Hill 2008
(This poem is included in my book The Observation Car which is available from
- Amazon.com (paperback)
- Amazon.co.uk (paperback)
- Barnes&Noble (e-book)
- Lulu (paperback or e-book)
Sideways Station 