As a man under a restraining order
Still follows his ex about from day to day
I stalk your shadow as if you could show up
In two places at once like St Francis of Assisi
In the Aldi carpark, or the filling station.
Yet when after  years of vacuous fantasy 
Like an unending run of Blithe Spirit
You cycle towards me smiling in the park
I march straight past, like a soldier going over the top,
Or a man with his head  immobilised 
In the vice of some Victorian photographer
And set against some fictional  background of palms and columns, 
While into mind comes a pair of tiny swords
That mark an old battle on an ordnance survey map


Miles Burrows has published a collection A Vulture’s Egg with Cape and was included in the anthology British Poetry since 1945 (Penguin: Lucie-Smith) and Best Poems of 2015 (Salt. ed Emily Berry). His poems have appeared in TLS, Poetry Review, Poetry News, PN Review. His forthcoming collection will be published by Carcanet.

 

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