DOMINIC RIVRON
English
One day at school
our English teacher
handed out the poetry books.
He made us read
a short, sad story of rejection
by one Wole Soyinka.
It seemed
a strange poem to find
in a place like that:
one of those grubby, hardback schoolbooks
full of poems about animals
full of in-your-face similes
illustrating the power of
the English language.
But then
it was not a poem,
the English teacher said. It was
just prose chopped up and
not a rhyme in sight.
He sucked his teeth, in case
a few stray syllables had lodged
between them.
In A Bookshop
All you can see through the tall windows are
the rooftops of the city, and the sky
(both crinkled slightly by the imperfect glass).
This partial view serves to convey a sense
of stillness in which people linger, drawn
to contemplate the stacks, searching the spines
for words they hadn't thought of, books that might provide
some sort of landmark on a mental map.
Askrigg
I saw no angels:
only the sun
catching the slates
of the wet roof
after the rain.
The stream was full,
coughing its way impatiently
through a concrete pipe.
A skylark sang and,
on the opposite hill, a car
twinkled like a fallen star.
Dominic Rivron was born in 1958. He lives in the North of England. He is a music teacher who composes music and writes poetry. He is a past winner of the Yorkshire Prize at the Ilkley Literature Festival and has had poetry published in Scratch Magazine, Pennine Platform and The Poetry Bus. These days he usually publishes his poetry online. Dominic's blog is here.
