Like, you float
and welcome the buoyancy
But
a mooring now and then
would be loved

The smell of you,
an impossibly intense run of ones and zeroes
converted to map your DNA
G A T T A C G A...
like everyone and no one

Forbidden skin folds, slickly hidden,
I carried with me
with some half lies that helped
keep everything off radar
‘til ready

Cottoning on to the lost in me
with fingers and caresses,
blessing a gleeful wink of grins
to an adulthood
that refused to begin,
and refuses still

Little feet buckled up
in scuffed Clarks,
we ambled down hill

Below, the valley
coloured toasted wheat
smelled of forever

The school hall,
everyday familiar
for singing hosannah
became exotic, foreign

Different games played
and illicit sherbet
in cardboard tubes
to be chewed to a pulp
in carefree mouths

All the term rules fell,
and stayed away
til the apple trees called time

Wet grass caps toes,
a long missed inconvenience,
each pace lifting
weight long loved

The dappled, leaf stopped light
tries to placate,
but you won’t stay

Like time and tide
you wipe your face clean
and disappear through trees
with no trail

I shot the breeze today
with crickets, beetles,
spiders and caterpillars,
we held a moot.

Each representative, a voice:
words in the clamour
to be heard

In these lands of
many common grasses,
breeze told anecdotes,
arachnid needs
and insect calls for attention
often get ignored

Stopping to sit,
look through clutches of eyes,
sing with rattled wings
and chew cud,
can help retune the din
to be cleanly heard

Remind me again
of the where and when of it,
it’s slipping through my finger memories
and my heart slows

Tell me of the Technicolor past,
even with the scratched film stock
I need to see it again
to affirm the mummers truth
and rest easy

I know you tire of the words,
of me,
sorry, sorry me

But the third reel is fixed
and the epilogue’s flickered approach
rattles near

Before the credits roll
narrate me a last flashback
to suspend our disbelief in

The bittersweet blast
of ending another
another one.

Weird, unnatural, irrational.

Mixing maudlin with
the electric buzz of new beginnings,
we will drink and sleep,
cheap grins on our faces
‘til we’re adrift in three week’s time.

These days and friends are mine.