37 THE WRITER’S CORNER THE WRITER’S CORNER Michael W. Thomas Smile I’m tired of walking the city, trying to go nice to nice with shuttered faces. I’ll stay at home, warm and quiet, sideways on to the round window in the closed and twilit porch— my smile can make what it will by itself, out and about, a butterfly over a quay, so to speak, a tickle in the rain. It might get lucky with the face of a side-street rambler— two smiles threading just for a moment two freedoms way above the stones, two snowflakes teasing the dark. Good luck to my smile and whatever of joy it may find whatever of loathing it may have to dodge like dust flown clear of a slamming book on an empty afternoon. good luck to all things that move though their effort may stir as much as wind in a time after planets. 38 CROSSROADS. A Journal of English Studies When colour depletes and my porch’s window gives up on show and tell I’ll lift the letterflap feel my smile tumbling in under my hand it will tell me in its different keys of silence how it has fared— hunting through the fissures of the day making like clown, Samaritan, peace-patcher— if it got between a hand and self-removal sealed a union of the widowed made someone laugh at a joke like itself, complete as a ripple, sudden as a lift of mist 39 THE WRITER’S CORNER How Now I’ve the look of a man who doesn’t know if he’ll come out where he went in I sing these days under my breath prefer the gaps between words the moments after things happen I see but no memories mass about thought shows its usual lump beneath the covers coming out of a station say I may wonder what kind of evening the sun has struck for us then drop into it feel how footsteps trap destinations how the colours of traffic splash each other up from lane to lane here comes a man hands-free spraying intimacy onto other breaths there goes a many-frocked giggle this woman’s had enough of her child yanks his arm like a cut of bungee rope that boy stands pudgy and baffled on the eve of his adult life his face doesn’t know if it should laugh or cry I could stand forever in nowheres like this snapping and deleting 40 CROSSROADS. A Journal of English Studies I could die here furl to a brief aggravation of air leave my image to sink like daylight through the waves an echo that never used a word 41 THE WRITER’S CORNER Harbours Hill Worcestershire One day I shall return to Harbours Hill and die. On its only street, cambered, gritted the colour of headache, against the fall of January stars I shall let my eyes roll back to see what my mind makes of the last quaint shuffle of life… having looked in the window of the village’s one shop, how it gathers little marvels of winter light on stuff it never sells… having walked the greenish length of the path beside the unattended church to see the berries drowse in their blood between the railing-spikes… having stood in the church itself in case the breathing dust should work loose a word from a long-immured prayer. On the only street at the mouth of the path I shall set like a tumbler, my bones brewing a forward roll so when it comes I fold soundlessly, ball up where the railings meet scarps of moss. Mulch to mulch, preserved a while as a randomness of sockets till the grasses of spring fill my eyes, lush over the whitened nooks in which a passenger-spirit might once have bided my time.