this death
by David McLean
trees span twigged fingers low reach down to dark ground
swart as this black who spun his history for me.
melancholy the man who remembers the ones that first
went. the first of God struck as a hammer the anvil
of life some night. days spun away then and twirled
back their vortices through tired time as arms unfolded
to that caress. like me and history the naked day undressed.
the ending is usually the best.
David McLean was born in Wales in 1960, though he's lived in Sweden since 1987. In the nineties he had a few poems published in, for example, Envoi. In August 2008 he will be "centre stage poet" in Decanto. He lives in Stockholm with his fiancée and five horrible cats.