Nineteen-fifty-three
For a man who likes numbers
It was the year that my brother
And a one time lover were born
Without fear today we take on Shrewsbury
A place where another lover and I
Used to go to the folk festival
One year we were there as stewards
Back to numbers, yesterday my friend
Mailed me a dozen love poems
As though his loving bottle had exploded
Was he always, all, all or nothing
Should I tidy up
Or should I play
Or, for the sake of balance
Should I do a bit of both
Meanwhile I post a photograph
To Instagram, and also
Oh I don’t know what to say
Not quite my ex that’s for certain
Anne, once our next door neighbour
Said that she did not care for the term
Partner, nor lover either actually
Why not just boyfriend or girlfriend
Should I give up trying to tidy up
And while I am at it stop playing
Because I’m tying myself in knots
And maybe you also
Cakes and ale
Both are fine
Though not together
What else
Then to find
That is better apart
For instance
The singing bowl
And the bodhrán
May in the future
Be looked back upon
As soulmates
While the coir rug
Points to the flat
In Kingsbridge
Raindrops
Fall on the yard
Where leaves already await
Yesterday’s trip
Beside the drain
On worn out subsided roads
Today it is the sound
Which I take as kindness
A sort of companion to silence
And with that
I am taken to the Cotswolds
To the monastery
Once housed
In a brutalist modernist building
But now somewhat different
Time moves on
Societies rise and fall
I live as living proof of such
What I see
Is the big big tree
Way way bigger
Than me
At first I bask
In its enormity
Gathering in
Also letting through the sunlight
But on closer inspection
I become concerned
At its significant lack of symmetry
Out of sync almost two-fold
The west side stretches
To where the west side sun resides
The east side closes up
To were the east side sun rises but moves on
How long can this go on
The cousin across the green
Has already suffered the ignominy
Of replacement
