The Blazing Hat, Part Two

This is the morning that we burnt a cardboard hat
flames licking the inside of the brim
This is the morning that the thunder hung like great
black flags over the city
stirred by gusts of wind
This is the morning that they opened a new motorway
leading from my house to yours
This is the morning that I decided I wasn’t getting enough
roughage
and went on a diet of broken milk bottles
This is the morning that Death left her cloak behind
after the party
This is the morning that a beautiful schoolgirl woke me
with a cup of coffee
in a vision
This is the morning that we saw
words written on water
This is the morning that beautiful girls with Renaissance
faces played Hindemith records
at dawn
This is the morning after the night
before
This is the morning after the night
had strewn Canning Street with purple toilet rolls
This is the morning that we saw a q.­year­old boy
whipping an imaginary blonde lovely
This is the morning that Death was a letter
that was never scented
This is the morning that the poet reached out for the
rolled­up Financial Times
followed by a dreadful explosion
This is the morning that you woke up 50 miles away
seeing sunlight on the water

and didn’t think of me
This is the morning that I bought 16 different kinds of
artificial lilies­of­the­valley
all of them smelling of you
This is the morning that we sat and talked
by the embers of the blazing hat.