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Sport 20: Autumn 1998

Nick Ascroft — Bee in a Bookshop

page 113

Nick Ascroft

Bee in a Bookshop

Even pepped on caffeine tablets
There are cracks, or the shadow of cracks,
Hairline chasms plummeting away
Into a murky exhaustion
Currently papered over.

If I buzz around the shop
Like an idiot bee, dancing away
The hours & the dollars per hour,
If I waggle my thorax and not
My unpillowed head, my nectary pen-hand
& Not my watch-hand, then my watch
Will pulse on my wrist unnoticed &
Slowly find my head a pillow.
This box is everything: slipping the knife
Through the tape on the sides & centre,
Folding the petals back,
Gorging my attention on the contents,
Everything,

Every practised motion, every numbed
Flutter, every effervescence of the antennae
Consumed with feathery messages.
The next box, the next box
& The box after will be everything.