So this is a poem I wrote a few years ago and have touched-up here and there since. I did post it on another blog I started called ‘London Tails’ which never got going really. Anyway, this was the beginning of a difficult time in my work life if I recall, and one day I realised I did nothing but walk with my head down. The poem is me talking to myself as much as anything else, searching for optimism in everything around. And finding it to be honest.
Look up Not down.
Beyond the curls and crown of the treetop canopy
And the flat-roofed buses shuffling busily.
Look up,
Not ahead I say.
At the old clock of rusted iron
Its hands undone at a twenty-to-one.
To balustrades lovingly made
And statuettes, imploring to be saved.
At mid-riff cut-aways
At windows dancing.
To the chair on its back, compliant
And a terrace of the young defiant.
At heads and shoulders nodding
Through open windows.
To glove puppet birds, perched beside
A torn plastic bag, cut to size.
At gap-toothed chminey pots
And shivering aerials
To slingshot cranes
And a suspended window-cleaner.
Where once tower blocks climbed high
Now we can see, light and sky.
Where once we saw, light and sky
Now rise new shadows and mixed blessings.
So now that the sun is dusking
And the high contrails reddening.
Look up, not down,
For me if for no one else.
Before it is gone.
Before your very eyes.
SD November 2010
Simon Denegri Poetry 