Park Run by Becki Hawkes

Google Maps
makes birds of us all, makes
this small spare triangle of green

between the main road, the houses
and the tube line
into something easily scrolled past, lost –

but I am human-sized now, have found
the air inside the air, driven
my trainers into the hard path, the wet mud

moved my body through fumes and sycamores,
over bridges and plague pits, spun

wide runner’s loops
round the children on tricycles,
the double prams, the scooters, the man

who clasps a Costa with both hands
like a private prayer or tiny
love-squeezed rodent, like the last warm milk

in the universe. The skies here
don’t go out without a fight:

make mirrored towers swell
with heatless colour, anoint cranes, turn the
bark on winter trees

to fragile copper skin

for a full four holy minutes –

and now the train screams past
one hard rushed dance of yellow squares

and this dying Wednesday
is awake with parakeets
exhilarating neon and familiar.

………………..

Becki Hawkes lives in London, works in communications and enjoys running and butterfly watching. She has had work published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Rust + Moth, Brittle Star, Pulp Poets Press, Crow & Cross Keys, Little Stone Journal and Wrongdoing Magazine.

Twitter: @BeckiH_678