Howard Firkin
I flew to Hampstead Heath so I could lie
and watch the planes thread cloud-bead necklaces.
This is the season everybody says
you should experience before you die.
I lie and feel the inner spring unwind.
I didn’t come to gnaw the dry, unmarrowed
soup bones of history, or come to look
for faint lines in the margins of a book,
or potted wisdom underlined and arrowed.
Experience was all I hoped to find.

And all I found was lying on the grass
and hearing birds I didn’t recognise
explaining how grass grows, days pass,
spring comes and will be gone, and how love dies.