The Rook

One electric winter in the middle of the day
Beside a creaking window where no sunlight made its way,
The sky was heaving ashes into streets that emptied out
On to traffic-free deliveries of nowhere, nothing, nowt.

A scraggy rook came flying on the wet and whistling air
And landed just right opposite and fixed me with a glare.
“I’ve come to tackle boredom, are you set my child?” said he.
“I think I’m fine,” I said to him. “Have you just come for me?”

“I have, I have,” he added. “Yes, a wintry fix have I.”
His feathers swelled and suddenly there seemed to be no sky.
A voice came cawing from the dark that gathered all about.
“Come in, my child, come in and play, you’re better in than out.”

And so I stepped from my drab day for all my days to come
Inside the rook’s cold chemistry and forest night ride home
And there we found the music of the yesteryear of now
Which rang out over shining coals and glinting jet somehow.

“ What is this place?” I asked the rook, his eye up close to mine,
“Why this is home,” he chortled, “where the midnight sun may shine.”
“So what’s below?” I asked him as we clawed our way around.
“The past, I think, and at its brink your future may be found.”

“I can’t see much,” I added. “But I see a farm ahead.
It has a lit up trail of sparks and are those wolves in bed?”
“Ah, wolves,” the rook then offered. “Yes, the wolves are here to stay,
they drink the winter beer and play their violins this way.”

“I see them dancing on the step now, waving,” I went on.
“Good, good,” the rook said happily, “We’d better move right on.”
And so towards the blackest farm we made our cheery way
And sang our rudimentary songs forever and a day.

Quite out of the blue, while I was under pressure on a few writing deadlines, I started hearing children’s poems in my head and before I knew it I was dashing down verses and having some fun — now there’s bound to be some psychology of avoidance in here, I hate deadlines and I always run myself up against them and always get stressed and annoyed with myself and draft and redraft things I’m working on. But I’ve never written children’s poems before. Now, I am working on an exciting new development at Salt — we’re launching a new children’s list in 2010 and it may be that somewhere, in the back of my mind, all the nonsense verse I play around with when talking to my children just spilled out into something new. Here’s a sample of what I’ve drafted:

Old Ben Turpin

Old Ben Turpin can tweak the stars
and bend his fingers back like this.
He can turn one blind eye away from the other
And look in to his skull for juices.

Old Ben Turpin has a complete disregard
for consequences, to the extent that
He yearns for his mattress-life and sleeps
All the days he musters. He dreams of you.

Old Ben Turpin is no fool, he brings his shopping
Home in a cloth-covered cart drawn by donkeys. They have no smiles.
He has a beard for a weapon.
He has a bad heart whose clinkers are cooling fast. They click.

Old Ben Turpin knows you, all right. He knows your feet.
He knows your knees. Your hips. Your pumping lungs.
He has plans for you that mean meat stew.
He has a few deliveries to make. He’ll come back later.

Old Ben Turpin is a friend of your mum’s
Especially when it comes to shopping for ingredients.
Ears. Nose. Lips. Tongue. Chocolate-coated finger tips.
He’s counting on you for quality. He expects good things.

Chop, chop. Chop, chop. Old Ben Turpin
Has been mean to you. He totally meant to saw you up
and feed some snippets to his dogs. Who smiled and yapped a lot.
If you see him, spit into the wind and say “Take the West road home!”