August the First, 2024 by Marc Woodward

The Poetry Archive Now! WordView 2024 Entry
Poet’s Biography
Marc Woodward is a poet and musician living in rural Devon.
He has been widely published, shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize and commended for both the 2020 Acumen Prize and the Aesthetica Creative Writing award. He is a 2022 Pushcart Nominee.
He has published five collections of poetry, the latest being Grace Notes, written in collaboration with Andy Brown (Sea Crow Press 2023).
Poem Description / Inspiration
Written in response to the Southport stabbings and the first night of rioting.
The weather was hot and a friend remarked that if it had been raining the riots might have been much more short lived. Did the heat play a part? And what part does chance play in everything?
The ‘strangers heading westward’ and the flash fiction reference relate to the underlying immigration/refugee debate.
Poem Text
August swaggers in at midnight,
surly and intoxicated,
panting round the bedroom.
The french doors are open,
the fan whirrs, clicking
as it faces back and forth,
staring down the heat.
Across the estuary
a train writes flash fiction
of strangers nodding westward
in boxes of stale breath
and broken sleep.
*
We rise early,
get the morning news,
take our coffee in the garden.
Suddenly a kingfisher
shocks the moment,
gleaming over the dry stream.
“He’ll be lucky…” you say.
Maybe chance is everything?
I feel it when I hear the news.
This week in Southport.
Three little girls. Heartbroken families.
Thugs rioting in the heat.