Bred wild leopards – among the pale depth fungus.
Loach. Torpid, ginger-bearded, secret
Prehistory of the canal’s masonry,
With little cupid mouths.
Five inches huge!
On the slime-brink, over bridge reflections,
I teetered. Then a ringing, skull-jolt stamp
And their beards flowered sudden anemones
All down the sunken cliff. A mad-house thrill –
The stonework’s tiny eyes, two feet, three feet,
Four feet down through my reflection
Watched for my next move.
Their schooldays were over.
Peeping man was no part of their knowledge.
So when a monkey god, a Martian
Tickled their underchins with his net rim
They snaked out and over the net rim easy
Back into the oligocene –
Only restrained by a mesh of kitchen curtain.
Then flopped out of their ocean-shifting aeons
Into a two pound jam-jar
On a windowsill
Blackened with acid rain fall-out
From Manchester’s rotten lung.
Next morning, Mount Zion’s
Cowled, Satanic majesty behind me
I lobbed – one by one – high through the air
The stiff, pouting, failed, paled new moons
Back into their Paradise and mine.