Squirrel
Xylophones past
Back like a heart monitor
Arch. Flirts with me
Behind a tree.
Wouldn’t it
Be nice
To have that
Footballer grace
Of thoughtless
Thought.

We went batwatching in the fields behind our school all eerie liquid in the lambent night
told how furglow wingbeats purred
beyond the skrying of our childish lights.

They see with sound and echo-
So you said.

Imagined heartbeats whisked around my head.

We waded against sunwet grass in August
across the road they exhumed Norman ruins.

Shovels clattered heavy in the turns of a grey birdsoft evening.

An old well plumped in the garden, of string and wax
we made a vessel to lower against its echobrightened
depths.

To win a flash of water sparking bright
in shattered French sailor's sunlight.

Never did you or I
feel trapped
enclosed, in our closed-door room

Someone walked in on us once
happened before
always a funny burst
from the momentum of ***
to the machine which makes us laugh at ourselves.

But no - we never were unhappy, laughter
was a government quota we were happy to fulfil.

And I loved your friends, and you mine
it didn't take an awful lot of time to end
after that.