Slough

I don’t know which pronunciation either
but will trust an advert that chooses semicolons over em dashes,
little Basil Bunting beards in favour
of shattered thistledown’s propellers.
Language as capillary action rising through
a sugar cube, growing heavy, placed on the tongue –

this is easier to explain in pidgin pillowtalk,
the link between grammar, glamour, grimoire,
mammoth (adj.) and slighted wheels of cheese,
appeasing hierarchies of action –
prowess is not just the female, foremost part of a ship’s bow,
the coffee cart, the obvious similes about Kintsugi, startling
the sun through clouds, through kite-marked windows.

I start and end days with you        isn’t that silly
conceits easily conceded by bus centres every day.
The ease with which kids can find new mouths,
loyalty only to low-slinged words and their balsamic notes –
300,000 birds yet still we get to call it murmuration –