by the radio:
I mishear the news and sports presenter
say ‘the latest in nuisance sports’,
outside the light is green,
the lightning frightening      stay away      
from windows       but the storm                 
takes no notice of me and my black Bic biro
here at the kitchen table
with a new biography of Dante – ‘Dante;
The Poet, The Political Thinker, The Man’
I’d just begun reading twenty minutes ago,
the cover image, a detail from a portrait of him,
one book open as he turns
to consult another, open and propped
up against two others, leather-bound,
he has the poet’s leafy laurel twig
tucked into his familiar red headscarf.
poetry is like
tv’s live coverage and if you change
a particle you can arrive at an elegant result
via electronic properties and, probably,
high conductivity in an electrical storm,
but the computer is down and so am I –
my bad handwriting taxes my energy,
how does my brain put up with it?
(who am I to ask?)
this almost illegible notation driven into
the empty moments between a book
and a book, a poem ‘made in situ’,
the phrase imagined
as a T-shirt slogan or a label
but handwritten