Gordon Mason- Three Poems

Café Solo

A visitors’ book lies

unopened and unsigned.

I look at my face

in a glass of black coffee

fringed by a caramel corona.

The glass shakes in my hand.

My face creases into fluid forms,

shifting skin.

I drain the glass

of this lonely thirst.

A visitors’ book lies.

©

Hour After Hour

            snow

stamped with forced heels and soles

trenched with the labour of ignorant dragged feet

spotted with the youth of innocent skipping feet

            one hour after

            the first fall

pastry cutters

            snow

stamped with forced heels and soles

            one hour after

            the second fall

one hour after

the oven fired

©  

Until

a twisting tower of bamboo steps

a handrail that will snap on touch

it curves to the skies with one point

off which you will jump

jump and fly past a brittle criss-cross

of broken dreams, shattered in transit

unstable ladder now

it has no feet and leads to the horizontal

from a vertical past

feet that have trod on layers of rests

are silent - no more to sound on cracks

slung together by sounds of trumpets

the messenger of the horn, the coming of bamboo

the curtain has been pulled back, wrenched aside

and yet it still goes round and round, up and up

until

until

there is only free air, free space

a catalogue of emptiness from which you can order

peace on wires of knowledge

vision on eyes of hawks

strength on strings of violins

“come back to earth” the planets cry

from far reaches of a spotted tar sheet

Man has travelled and left his footprints

echoes into our thoughts

taken over by others

©

Gordon Mason divides his writing time between Scotland and Spain. Born and raised in Fife, Scotland, he has been a member of The School of Poets at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh. His first collection of poetry entitled 'Catapult to Mars' was published in 2006 by Poetry Monthly Press, and in 2010 further ebooks 'Black footprints in the frost' (Catapult Press) and 'Thunnerplump' (The Red Ceilings Press) were published.  His poetry has appeared in more than 30 publications and he has been included in Poetas Para El Siglo XXI. 

He shares his poetry at www.catapulttomars.blogspot.com and invites other poets to share some of their work here too. Many poems are in two languages. Poems can be in English, Scots and/or Spanish.