Ex Isca

Who would have thought
That the views of the city
Are best found just below
The birds’ eye line
Up here, where the pollen flecks
Waft breezily
Where the dandelion seeds hover
Like canopyless umbrellas
Is a mountain top, with views unparalleled
An enceinte of low wooded hills
Thick greens of oil paint daubed in ribbons
Moss, mint, bright limes, laurel
Trees and shadows sketch their lines
Ex Isca, across the distant Haldons
And Blackdowns and the gloomy Moor
Yet in the foreground, all around
Beauties of a man-made kind
The gothic arches of the museum
Spreckled sandstone, daisy quatrefoils
Flying buttresses of the cathedral soar
And bend convexly like a giraffe’s legs
The river, a metallic snake, winds sideways
The distant sea peeps in through a cruck
In the wall the Romans’ built
Who would have thought
that the views of the city
Are best found up here
On a rooftop car park
Or vertiginously balanced
On a Department Store toilet seat
Stories of our land six storeys up
Up here, where the pollen flecks
Waft breezily
And where the dandelion seeds hover
Like canopyless umbrellas