AT FRANKIE'S

I sit in the sun at the top of Frankiels back steps
reading an introduction to Zen Buddhism. Someone
actually painstakingly wrote
these enlightening words so I can relax
& meditate without effort or dope –
or anything. Why do you have to agitate
the mind when it's already agitated?


I've got my washing in the basin. Frankie's
at work. Peanut, the dog, is in the kitchen
licking the wet floor & following, with its free
eye, a fly droning across the vast space
of the room . . . Which reminds me
of a dream I once had of my grandfather
sitting in the back seat of a car sipping raw yoke
from an eggshell held carefully in one hand with
the other catching the transparent white dripping
beneath a dentureless mouth.
In the driver's seat is my father. The rest
of the car is filled with kids & relations & none
of them seem to know who the others are or even
where they're going. . .


Frankie's teenage daughter stomps bored
through the house slamming doors, switching
the radio on & off. There's no one to take her
out - 'to town or anywhere!' she yells. Frankie's got
the car & won't be back till well after five o'clock.

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