Nick Laird

 

Bear Hug

It's not as if I'm intending on spending the rest of my life doing this: 

besuited, rebooted, filing to work, this poem a fishbone in my briefcase. 
The scaffolding clinging St Paul's is less urban ivy than skin, peeling off.

A singular sprinkler shaking his head spits at the newsprint of birdshit. 
It's going unread: Gooseberry Poptarts, stale wheaten bread, Nutella and toothpaste. 
An open-armed crane offers sexual favours to aeroplanes passing above.

I hadn't the foggiest notion. Imagine: me, munching cardboard and rubbish,
but that's just what they meant when they said, Come in, you're dead-beat, 
take the weight off your paws, you're a big weary grizzly with a hook through his
                                                                                                      mouth,

here, have some of this love.