Forgotten to take the pill, was it?
Or perhaps somehow the ****** split -
An accident, or surprise?
Just the sorts of thoughts suspicious minds
Might have of couples
like you.

Not that anyone said those things with you in mind,
But I think there are other suspicious signs;
To begin, I'm wary of a child born on a midwinter day,
cursed with snow every third birthday,
Or maybe I'm suspicious of the harrowing sight
of a miniature pair of shoes,
Or a child returning, smiling (or teary eyed)
from a first day at school.

When we go on, with us die (at least it is said)
our first snowfall, first kiss
First rush of joy to the head,
The first (and last) love
vanish too when we come to be dead.
Not so sad a thought, I say, for just to be born
Is to be handed a road-map, and that job is yours.
The map must take us entire from hither to yon
So put clear crosses on the junctions beyond
To spotheights that matter, that you yourselves found;
First last dance, last love
Second **** (perhaps), but surely first bike,
First time to lay awake with friends too late in the night
First getting up and first falling down
And to know the outdoors and be cosy inside
To be loyal in friendship, and savour the ride
And know, that for all your love
Noone survives.

But with all that aside, I conclude,
What it is that I mainly suspect, (far worse than the rest)
Is the thought of a child so ignorantly blessed
To have been born to such wonderful people
As you.

The wind drummed up on the bedroom window
But inside was warm with music,
There I recalled a time you had sang unnoticed
And the moment called out to me;

The noise of offbeat piano -
Lazier than a clear June afternoon
Simpler than breakfast on a weekend morning
And then I'm sure I heard the sound
Of hot chocolate in the autumn

I heard a lifetime of golden Sundays,
I heard the voices of people to be
Wearing younger faces, we were once proud to wear,
And I heard the sight of the rolling sea.

But in a lull of wind I noticed
A sound that rang beyond the most distant farthing
And it was the sound of the joy
of having loved at all
And that it was you I had loved,
my darling.

Aged six, I think, charging through the front door,
With a mesh of macaroni painted and glued in the shape of a car
Stuck out at the end of two tiny arms:
Here's what I made for you!

Then a childhood flies by and before you can think, then we were four-
Now only three.
Perhaps you are off pottering about, in a room out of view
On some eternal Sunday afternoon
Having left, as you were wont to do
Your tea going cold on the counter.

I step back through the door, now twenty-six
And you're looking out from the kitchen,
Quietly smiling, golden sun painting shapes on your loose old tee,
And see me as a man, a bank account, two pips a master's degree
and a car, achievements won
just as messy as the spaghetti twenty years before
That I made for you.

Outside my window is a speed-bump,
And as drivers pass they slow down, I watch them and I think
That as they slow down, they stop to look inside.

The thought has made me uncomfortable, so-
I have written to the highways agency to ask
If they will move the speed-bump inside my flat
So that as I go, sometimes, I too
Can slow down,
and stop.

   And start to look outside