THE SURPRISER

Flying to Athens and intensive care,

the injured Cretan motor cyclist died

some time in the night over Melos.

Shrieking her grief, his mother ran in the aisle.

A stewardess tried to calm, restrain her.

The boy’s bare, pale feet were protruding

from an orange blanket. The makeshift cortège

bore us faster than he had ever dreamed.

In couch grass, on Chester’s Meadows, a hedgehog

was embarrassed by death the surpriser.

A trickle of blood betrayed it – and

indifference to strollers and to crows.