The swallows on the TV aerial
face west and watch
the fellsides undulate
like dunes in the dusk.
They gather on the telephone wire.
Yesterday, fifty.
Today more than double that.
Quick clouds skim purple
off the fells.
These are the facts
I’m faxing down my line.
Slow flying jets under
a low lying sky.
They fly south
over armies assembled in the dust,
appear on radar screens
the shape of cities,
and disperse
like grains of sand in a storm.
from Hole in the WallFind more by Tom Pickard at the library
Copyright © 2002 Tom Pickard
Used with the permission of Flood Editions.