This little poem came out of an exercise in a poetry workshop run by Stephen Knight. Five random words were picked out of a hat and we had 10 minutes to write a two-stanza poem, one of the words per line. I rather liked the result: the point of the exercise being that sometimes we work better with constraints than without them.
Rooted in waiting at bus-stops
she drifts off like a bird,
flits in and out of dreams of stairwells,
a pillar of deepest longing,
to bring tidy smell of wax.
A bird trapped in his rust-cage,
wax coats his wings and beak.
He comes to a glottal stop
halfway up the stair,
watching her turn to a pillar of salt.
