Angel of the North, Gateshead

What use are angels when the wind blows back
our sighs with the sand? What use this song, nosing
through undergrowth like a dog roots out smells,
tired of its own hot-blooded clichés, bored
with knowing how lost and forgetful we are
here in this reciphered, recycled world.
If we knew how terrible it would feel
to be reminded that beauty exists
just a fleet moment from the walkers' path,
in mould on a leaf or mud in a footprint,
what would we do, would breath catch or guilt grip?
No, if I were to shout, now, on this hill
above the Team Valley Business Park,
how many angels would hear it? How many
would care that my grief had blown their cover?
The change in my pocket occupies me
for a cold minute or two. The sobbing dark
chokes on my whistling, a tune that visits
and then forgets to leave. Forgive me.
I only mean to console myself.
This is a song for my mother, the past,
an echo I hear of a better world,
a trail worn out of knotted grass, folly
that pushes you on into the woods,
a place torn down that started again,
dark native mud still on its boots,
unilluminated wings stretched out.
Magpies croon and croak and try to catch it,
trees sway bare and brown, wind-blown
hedges mime the river rushing seawards
while it takes in this hopeful new song.
The angel rusts a welcome to its brothers,
its wings embrace prayers, its sore heart escapes
the buried pithead in a gasp of song,
over the seasoned museum of the land
where the worm is king, turning like a screw
in a rawlplug, a bradawl into wet bark.
The keening rises on the valley's thermals,
rolling and tumbling into low hinterland.
But there are shadows left even by angels,
where the coal sleeps soundly, silent miles down.
The wild coast between here, there, now and then
is not so solid as it used to be.
This song was only meant to warm the air.
If it could do more it would be unbearable.
There are things only angels can forgive.

Dalton Park/Murton

To join the Dalton angels you must drive past
terraced rows as straight as dentures,
detached from town like a retina, head
for the purple lights of the outlets, the fun.
The backs of shops open like old tallies
used to spill their wires when broken,
lorries emptying themselves into the maws.
The streets are being unmade like sick beds,
cobbles long gone but still no tarmac.
Bassi's Golden Chippy sits the top of a line
of harsh steps and jagged cuttings to the sea.
The wind feels like history. The wind hurts.
It doesn't know, and neither do the angels,
where the backs end and scrubland starts.
Something could get undone here, on these
scrappy municipal football pitches.
Someone could get their name engraved
on the war memorial even now.
The Colliery Inn still hangs on to its paint,
but it's a backyard really, to the fresh
landscaped heart of retail you head for.
Fat where muscle reigned when this land was cleared,
the reverse somehow of a hunger strike,
this place belongs now to families, not men.
Between waddling girls and their tattooed fellas,
slow moving traffic with walking sticks shops.
Old men on the surface trying on slacks,
faces veined with years of black, delighted
now that bastard pit is gone, built over.
They dream of the roof falling above them,
wake with a cough, even the young ones.
Their grandas watch them as they pass by
and are envious, in the way angels can be,
giddily, tetchily, puzzled at themselves.
When they see a coach arrive they quicken,
run towards it, to stop it, but its only
daytrippers from Durham. They keep feeling things
that are memories of when they were young,
blush at the innocence of their mistakes.
Hopeless shop girls buy their lunchtime coffee
from hapless scrunched up time-killed waitresses.
Old women open sun-dried tomato wraps
and flash right back to that first frothy coffee.
Their friends are dying but they do not know why.
This is a bargain of a bright morning,
there is no need to spoil it for everyone.
An angel rips off his shirt, spreads his wings
and feels the watery sun on his chest.
Trees exist, but not here, not yet.

Dockside Road, South Bank

Down Dockside Road things divide imperfectly,
containers block entrances to hallowed ground.
The cooling towers' pinched waists leave a smudge
of grey upon grey, cack-handed, over-looked.
Curtains cover hills that linger behind
the long back gardens of Lackenby.
In South Bank the show has not changed for years.
Parmo has left his mark in graffiti
and gravity's pull on paid-for bellies.
The betting shop is the brightest thing here.
The granddads pushing prams are whey-faced ghosts
of their granddads walking down to docks
in the bright heyday. Sculptured roundabouts,
all molten steel and welders muscles,
cast in the downtime so we remember,
could tell you a thing or two. It's not true,
that story about the sign on one of them,
‘Happy 30th Birthday, Grandma.'
Behind the last hoarding plastered with posters
lies the market stall of consolation.
There the angels fight over slim pickings,
crumbs roll into balls going back to dough,
a candy-pink dolphin-edged ashtray,
a 30 miles an hour sign from the estate,
a brochure for luxury detached living
with no garden, an artwork made of string
and nails on a black-painted board,
two daffodils, an oak leaf and an umbrella,
three lengths of cornicing and a loo seat.
The angels engage with messiness,
they say, but you can take it too far.
They are not here for the good of their health:
you will find them in the karaoke.