For the first time

For the first time

In a long time

I hear children

And the sound of birdsong

It isn’t a difficult thing

To dream one’s dreams

Yet always we must be careful

Just what we wish for

Take care as you tread

On the cusp of solitude

And loneliness, for one repairs

While the other edges towards despair

That we don’t always know

Or half-way recognise

One from the other says much

About the frailties of the human psyche

Where, in her words

I discerned the self same doubts

Which, day after day

Asked me to pick up my pen 

One day

One day

I will be still

And in that stillness

I will write

Of the purity

Of the silence

Of the sublime beauty

Of the truth

All captured

On the day

Of sunlight and frost

Of dew and fine drizzle

Which

Once your hair is damp

Will cease

And invite you

To buy an ice-cream

 

Back with the blue

Back with the blue

In such a way

As never having been away

Just like the restaurant

At Gloucester Docks

Seems like yesterday

Of course Wagamama

Does carry that deja-vu

Also being in Sheffield and Lincoln

Yet all are back in the day

All truly before

Blue came along

To bring Berlin

Into my life

With its theatres and its wall

And its bridge over the river

By the gate, and the hotel

Where an imaginary I once stayed 

I rest awhile

 I rest awhile

Wondering

Where my pen might take me

From the imagined streets

Of Berlin

To that bridge over the river

After several strong shots

Of whisky

In the American’s bar

Such a long kiss

The sort of embrace

Which opened all imaginations

And it was me

I was my own co-conspirator

Narrator, and cause celeb

It was I

Spinning and weaving

In the depths of a writer’s double life

I look

I look

At the nine

New notebooks

It is time

To press on

Time to interrupt the delay

But first

To tell you of the sunlight

To tell you

Of the canons of inspiration

Such strombolic music

To accompany

The bending light

The rainbow waveforms

Emanating

From the window crystals