The Poem Called
when I was doing something else

it may have been spreading
emulsion
like lilacs
or memories of The Potteries’
bottle kilns, or rows of terraced houses

or a curious mind
that reinvents
a room, lilac, a spring day
and a poem about
a lilac room
and a day in season

watching the trees outside
and the bar across the road
open its doors
this day in early spring

watching the trees outside, thinking that
watching the trees
is thinking about saying that
the trees might re-invent themselves

as my mind invents a room, in lilac
distant and fraught
and brought back
to the claims of affection

and the way the world runs,
on an early spring day,
on a day, early in lilac,
on an early lilac day, in spring