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.