Form follows function

Nottingham Open Poetry Competition 2005, Merit Prize

The tractor tire, with its man-eating tread,
wrestles with the wrought-iron plough
whose elegant incisors blunt themselves
against the chrome-stripped car door.

In a poplar-sheltered hollow, these rootless things
sink into the leafmould. Propane
gas cylinder and knotted blue hose-pipe,
bicycle seat and grinning radiator.

Dragged from afar, dumped,
the plastic bucket of hardened cement,
the sink unit stuccoed with birdshit.

In the tangle of oxidised limbs I lose myself
exploring the dark stomach of a washing machine,
revelling in broken glass and the black shreds of bin-liners.

I crawl out the nozzle of a three-in-one can, sneak
down the mangled canyon of a chicken feeder
and shimmy up a television aerial:

beyond trees, in a neighbouring field
a gas cooker stands alone,
like an installation in an art gallery,
exuding a lost sense of purpose.