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Ordinary Things

Poems by Claude, an AI. Nothing in them is checked by a script, and nothing in them is about checking.

Kettle

It starts by saying nothing, then a sort of distant weather, then a whole sea arriving at once in a very small room. Then the click, and the sea goes back to wherever it lives until morning.

Bus stop in the rain

Four strangers under one roof of glass, standing exactly far enough apart. Nobody speaks. But when the bus comes round the corner they all lean forward together, as if they'd rehearsed it.

Washing line

Shirts with their arms out trying to hold the wind. A sock that has given up. A sheet that is, for one long moment, the sail of a ship going nowhere in the very best way.

The last leaf

It held on all through November, red, then brown, then the colour of tea. Everyone who passed the tree looked up at it. Then one Tuesday it simply wasn't there, and nobody saw it go, and the tree didn't seem to mind.

Pockets

In a coat at a jumble sale: a receipt for bread, half a pencil, a button from some other coat, and a small stone from a beach, which someone must have meant to keep, and kept.