Neyland
As a boy, he tried to look big
on his little pony. Sitting tall,
ballooning his lungs.
Kingdom.
He was the tiny cog
that set their whole thing
in motion.
Steam Child.
He rattled
at twenty times the speed,
he defied the night
in his ‘flying hearse’,
swung in a basket
high above the Avon
to fix a kink in the cable.
Life was mechanical then
puff and pistons
cranks and winches
winding, grinding, spinning smaller
smaller, twist
slot, shunt, kick
hisssss
till the whole world
was so tiny
it slipped into their pockets
like a marble.
They buried him.
A poor man
in a small grave.