Miracle on Wandsworth Road

There was something
in the air, something more than thunderclap

scrap-iron tumbling, than sudden downpours
of kerosene burning. There was also

luck in the air that morning, and not all of it bad.
—Ask the market

trader, kneeling to straighten a pallet of lilies
dampened by drizzle, who looks

up above to see a tangle of machinery
tangoing overhead. He rubs imaginary smoke

from his eyes, a crane and a helicopter
are skating across the underside

of a dust-grey drumskin of cloud.
—Ask the driver of the crane

clocking in late, while up above him
a carbon fibre rotor blade bearing his name

bisects his cockpit and pirouettes
earthwards to Covent Garden Market.

—Ask the poet who'd just sauntered past
with his music silently blaring

turning at the spectacle
of blue lights coursing along the embankment

like antibodies honing on a virus,
to see smoke rising, a pillar of basalt

propping up the sagging cloudbase.
—But don’t ask me,

for if my luck runs only
to not to have seen the shadow growing

on Wandsworth Road, I’ll take that. After all,
it could have been worse.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet