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   Jacket 33 — July 2007        link Jacket 33 Contents page        link Jacket Homepage

Rupert Loydell: Two poems



The Secret Life of Mist

Real dreams of city life,
the royal road to knowledge.

Religious ritual or dreamtime:
low cloud across the creek.

No clear sense of location,
the burden of awareness and place.

Listening at a distance
to neighbours in the park,

walking back home with
eyes both open and shut.



The Secret Life of Light

Hangs around all day not worrying,
dying for a hearty slice of the action.

Bounces off mirrors, through fibre optic bends,
seeps into our bedroom from the street outside,

pushing the dark away. Doesn’t care if it’s
an outdated metaphor, just wants to shine.

Particle or wave? Another forgotten problem.
Rituals and performance, multiple meanings:

the physics of the spirit world is anathema
to the spirits of the physical world.

Rupert Loydell is Lecturer in English with Creative Writing at University College Falmouth, and the Managing Editor of Stride Books and magazine. Recent publications include ‘Ex Catalogue’, a book of prose poems, and ‘Risk Assessment’, a collaborative poetry sequence, with Robert Sheppard.