Bolt from the Blue

 This is the poem that knows what will happen,
but doesn’t tell.  Instead, blurry pictures come,
half-forgotten pasts, mine or yours, I can’t be sure.
Hoped-for futures which may, or may not, arrive.  
It depends on how I behave now.

This is the poem that shows a scene on my screen.
Someone who looks like me starts,
runs across cobbles, towards uncertainty.
A fellow I’ve never met grips a blade, mustard yellow
in the streetlight.  He doesn’t see me.  He wants you.
I've never met you before tonight. But you’re it.        
Whatever it is, he wants it now.  In slo-mo
the knife slides close. It’s at your neck.  
I’m way too far away.

This is the poem that goes backwards, forwards,
linking the nows chain-fashion, but it’s not a chain,
it’s a net.  I’m here.  He hasn’t killed you yet.
In this poem I shove you, shout, “Run!”
I don’t know what happens here.
Cobbles greasy with rain. The streetlights go out.  
Running footsteps, slipping to distance. This poem
never quite shows the end. Unseen sequel on your screen:
What happens to you?  

A newspaper, scrunched, old house for chips
skipping across the flag market,
small triangular windows of copy: pasts I never knew.
Where are we now? I saw this tomorrow;
it was never a bolt from the blue.



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