Easter Saturday, Hyde Park

Winter's piggy-backing spring, squeezing ribs,

with icy thighs, scoring her pale haunches

with his whistling crop. Pigeons are downed

by rat-a-tat hail, sheltering their pates

as brittle as biscuit or Eucharist host,

dazed from the air turning grapeshot and grey.

It's at a loss, this apocryphal day:

parenthesised by murder and grace,

never knowing whether to storm or shine,

to pitch winter into The Serpentine

or let him beggar these bones to the ground,

and ride the year into the knacker's yard.

So I think I'll sit it out with Peter Pan

and see if Sunday wakes me as lost boy or man.

From Neptune Blue out now from Salt.