Frank

Claire Askew

is quiet at his window,
cut to ribbons by his Double Two shirt,
the slices of the old blind,
sunlight jutting in.
He’s often there, watching the year
assert itself: magpies lining their smart black coats
with light, daffodils setting up camp.

Captain Frank, retired, is 84.
He has no car, no dog
and no TV, but lives
the tiny dramas of the street.
It’s Frank who sugars grit along the path
before the snowfall comes.
It’s Frank who takes in everybody’s bins.

I looked up once from stacking wood
and found him at the front gate
with a gift for me: two ancient, dark red bricks.
A storm is on its way, he said.
Tie everything down.

All day I watch Frank’s house – identical
to mine – but no one comes or goes.
All day I wear the same stripe back
and forth across the pale straw rug.

Frank stands and tracks the movement
of the crows, the local dogs, the bin man’s truck.
Beyond the street the yards are full of fitted sheets
inflating on their whirligigs.

At night the wind plays sad trombones
under the eaves. I have the same recurring dream:
the houses shed their blotchy pebbledash
and blow away like paper lamps.
All except for mine and Frank’s.

Originally published in Gutter #13 (buy)

Claire Askew’s poetry collections are This changes things (2016) and How To Burn A Woman (2021), both published by Bloodaxe. How To Burn A Woman won the 2022 Saltire Society Poetry Book of the Year Award. Also a prize-winning novelist, Claire lives in North Cumbria with her black cat, Winifred Sanderson.

Twitter: @OneNightStanzas