Wooden floor, bed settee, bare walls
Except for a picture by Monet
Lyle Lovett on the hi-fi
His big band lingering
Oil pastels smudge my fingertips
Echoes of my son hurling pebbles
Into the half sight, dark light seas
Nights of ones own company
To play, to cry
To have the strength to sigh
Then go on to rediscover
Coir mat tiled flooring
Two bedrooms
A bathroom and a kitchen
Music that floats, to whichever
Of the four single beds
I choose to lay my head upon
Sufficient accommodation
For my visiting offspring, and for
My more recent, hopefully
Indecent acquaintances
Flights of ones own fancies
To play, to slay
To have the doubt to weigh
Up only the day of positives
Champagne or chilled white wine
On the sunny-side flags out front
Thoughts of the sophisticated town
That basks over the bakeries rooftops
It is the midwinters brightest season
Weathered by a micro climate
Sights that sensed
The inevitable impermanence
To live, to hopelessly give
To ply, to be so sly as
To shy away from reality
Floors stripped
Furniture and effects loaded
Onto a white removal van
Key fobs pushed, squeezed
With a don’t return note
Into the estate agents letterbox
My brother and my daughter
Present at this intermittent
Significant, half-final reckoning
My lover negligently absent
Rites of passage not observed
We swerve out of town
To deny, to give back the gown
Frown, as we call time
On the dreams end
