Dominic Leonard

 

 

Watching a murmuration on a bank of the Arno I sat down and wept

 

Squatting down in
The cave-behind-the-

Waterfall of your doings
Like some squeaky

Demented lobster
Is one of the easiest

Ways I have found
To be a hero

But still I cannot see
With any amount

Of introspection
What is laid down

On the thin, yellow
Dish of my heart

And still I cannot
Work out the distance

Between my hands
And the moon, that

Big nebulous meringue
Who can make any

Comparisons these
Days without feeling

One-thousand-six-
Hundred-and-forty-

Nine Florentine starlings
Judging them for it

Without feeling as
Damned as a basket

Of small china cats
As if the tilt and whim

Of an aerial textile
In the hot mint sky of

Any December evening
Were all there could be

To learn about
This soft, brief oasis

As if finally, in the
World there was

No-one to protect
Nothing to prevent

As when a bed is left
Unmade, a table

Left half-laid

 

 


Dominic Leonard read English in Oxford and is about to begin an MA in Postcolonial Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. Poems and reviews have appeared in Poetry London, Oxford Poetry, Zarf, Disclaimer, and elsewhere.


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