A melancholy December vision in Liverpool invokes a Dickensian ghost with more worldly but still warm realism
Down on the canal on Christmas Day
Down on the canal on Christmas Day
a man walks towards me out of water-light,
upright, Cratchit-wrapped, a smile to say:
I know you. Hello Chris. Ghost in a time-ripped landscape
where a low solstice sun spills whisked
through a metallic staircase.
With joy, the man’s smile haunts me for miles —
a long blasted path, where a dead rat’s belly festoons
its purple crinoline Christmas hat.
