17
Failure Memory

Hope is horrid, beating tiny and rapid:
the heartbeat of a squab
in the shadow of something
unspeakable.
A boy brushing boots in a changing room,
a boot bouncing off a boy onto the breeze block,
a bruise on a boy's back.
But a heart still beating.

So April can turn into the viewport,
the strung shadows on the wing
dropping under a false sun:
three all, one-nil, nil-nil.
That squab struggling in the thin air,
punctured by the reversal,
fails, falling to the minor roads
to rot there in the undergrowth.