This weaver
a sort of marionette,

her simple shuffle,
repetitive two-step,

pushing her slightly awkward strings
like someone closing a wide shallow drawer.

II

The nail file's
storm of pollen.

Pliable pink nail varnish,
a stroke of molten enamel.

III

An avalanche of pewter
bright at the point of a chisel.

IV

Leather pared off,
alive like a growth,

a shoemaker's slow, sudden shoot
in time-lapse photography.

V

This saddle, solid,
thick-lipped

as a boletus mushroom.
On the ground, a beagle.

As you lift it,
a Brancusi bird in flight

just after a wing-beat.
That something so

contrived - compare
the brassiere -

so impossible,
so frankly engineered,

should contrive to seem
so natural and so elegant . . .

VI

Cross-hatching
the stock of a Purdey,

verdigris gathers:
grass juice round a cricket stud.

VII

A flute,
Bauhaus at the mouthpiece,

the other end, a lollipop
of clasps and cluster,

of complication calmed,
enrobed in simple silver.

VIII

Cy Twombly's
rhubarb fool,

graffiti rescued,
accidents we make immortal.