The laughter subsides; we say thank you

Grey skies

Winds of abandoned summers

Blackbirds fly

Listen

Almost can you hear your influence

Yes that’s right, it is, it's Ummagumma

Me oh my

To walk all those miles

With no apparent purpose

Why oh why

Other than

To go from over here, to over there

Oh you romantics, you capture the roses

The Picardy, the smoke and the fuelled flames

Yes, you sure rubbed the carborundum

You, with your pretty curls; all the girls

Go, oh my oh my , he looked at me

And I just melted

Overnight, last night, the rains came

To water the gardens

To grow the green beans

To walk all those miles, now

Well almost, though apparently

That was your purpose for which we say thank you

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Lopsided left of centre

Those fears

In everyone's lifetimes

They lurk just as the crunching left backs

Sliding tackle could leave a young man

With a very different game

The nerve ends

Tips of estranged feelings

Shake, shirk, a skeleton bleeding

Dunkirk of poppy fields which lean

Their seed has seen its own discomfort

Real, or unseeming

In everybody's wake

Fake, or deep with meaning

Unique my name for you

For the you which is left, left upwards yet leaning

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Saffron aprons

Sleep

Still in the corner of my eyes

My breath

Not yet settled into a steady routine

Recovery

From a day in the garden

A day in the sun

I always used to tell my mum

Not to do too much

But

It was her way

After the least period of inactivity

Or even the sharpest strongest illness

Always before the convalescence was over

Out into the garden

To toil from dawn till dusk

Steep

Still the hills to reach the view

My depth

Not yet settled, into a life renewed

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Road works

This is my morning meditation

My slow slow body, and my slower mind

Awakening

With this pencil

To capture

The sprinkled water flowing

Onto the flagstones

Onto the concrete

Pavements

Unloaded

From my father's lorry

To the workmen

The navvies

By the roadside

With their bright brazier

Their enormous

Frying pans

Chock full of eggs and bacon

Here only to do 

What he had to do

To feed the kids

To stay above

The breadline

To retain a sense of worth

His morning meditation

To fill up

The forty-gallon diesel tank

With a coughing and a turning

Of the key; then to say

All and every day; it is, and was, always about me

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Out beyond the fence

A shaft of blue sky

Clear sun light

The sway of the chimney

The bay outwith of leaf

It is daft this mourning

With summer near

To laugh my all

In loudest cheer

My craft on dry land

In a sea of tears

You hold my hand

Offer to take on my fears

Shadows are about me

The bright moment

Seen earlier is moved on

The daylight now without relief

You see

I cannot even write these words

Without the slopes on the margins

The time-line is gone; yes, she was the thief

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