Ice Breaker Poem by Matthew Coombe

The simple garden at the back of the house
with it’s playhouse standing in the corner
and the empty bird feeder swinging from the fence
faces dead north.

Which means, if I am correct, that the road
beneath this misted window travels east.
And if the morning weather report is to be believed,
then somewhere miles beyond the end of this street,

out over the rolling slate waves of an icy sea,
is gathering a sandstorm of snow.
A vast swarm of bees,
spiralling in on itself again and again.

A biblical plague of white flies which,
whilst you and I have been playing out the introductions,
has swept silently through this place,
like a deserted spectral train

that screams through an empty platform,
its tattered drapes flapping wildly
through a thousand glassless windows.