Montage of my sons. IP

Quicksilver hands as sharp as eyes.

Your Trojan smiles flinty edged, your jawlines merge

with the fizz and pop of consonant and vowel.

American and Anglicised.

Whetted tremulous fears edge

the flat out landscape of your potential.

You’re a shimmer haze off the asphalt

firing around the curvature of the earth.

Ears lassoed with honeyed strands

the eyes meet in the middle.

He claps above a birthday cake

as you draw notes on shards of paper.

You stumble with six biting strings;

he pounds away on plastic frets.

You crack a chord, both turn to me

his words resound from out your mouths.

Ice-lolly milk breath scatters dandelion clocks

A toddler chases dollar bills

You sit mesmerised by flickering phones

and I forget who I’m talking to.

You’re like trying to hold on to a fireball;

chain a lightning bolt.

As your seat on a lunch box drumkit

strikes the feared chord of God in me.

I see in him through

voyeur Frances snapshots

Polaroids of our future;

you both prostrate on the blacktop,

me mired in the tarmac.