Ed Reiss lives and works in Bradford.
Bust umbrellas
I sing the broken umbrellas of Bradford,
black umbrellas in roadside puddles,
tartan brolleys in railway-cuttings,
umbrellas routed by Pennine winds,
inside-outed; runner, tube, cap and springs,
struts and stretchers, wires, washers,
ribs and limbs, bare as skeletons,
dumped in graveyards, stuffed in bins.
Here's one, abandoned by the underpass -
fabric slashed. Its struts poke out -
paralytic double-jointed daddy-long-legs,
masts and cables of a half-constructed dome
or never-to-be-finished planetarium