My old father’s bald summer head is French-polished

by slick sun, brilliant oil.
A glossy

From a clenched Mediaeval iron fist,

a skeletal finger of sunlight
flicks -

switches on the

Bumping home on random kerbs of air,
through summer’s glutted, cloying light,
glistening, sticky

The Chestnut aches,
holding up his heavy candelabras
in the rain.

Chronic

The garden is grinning with daffodils.

Yellow winks, stealth-gleams,
from pulled-tight green

A strait-jacketed choir of daffodils.
All claustrophobic sopranos.
Are made hysterical by a