I am that other person
Writing a biography
Of the life which I lived
If you wish to call that
An autobiography
Then that’s fine by me
But don’t go on about it
Because there isn’t time
Not even for those of you
Who were inkwell monitors
Or those of you who remembered
Using inkwells, to make
Blotting paper bombs
For shooting across the classroom
On to the teacher’s blackboard
Whilst the teacher’s face
Was focussed on the chalk spot
A wasp hovers by the pond
A pigeon pecks the grass
Before stepping out, as pigeons step out
Across a lawn one thousand pigeon-steps wide
Another pigeon, perhaps the mate
Comes in from next doors garden
Then a magpie enters the scene
Black, white and dangerously fluorescent green
That a butterfly, or two
Remind me of a garden pond
Where someone other returned home
Most unexpectedly
I too am here by chance
By a thousand coincidences
If truth be known
Or if truth may be told
Any one of those decisions
Could have begotten
An altogether alternative path
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
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
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