The single figure get ups
still felt an age away from the main event
mocked by a shooting star
behind today’s door
when even school still had writing and sums
without a hint of the glitter to come

Even with identical calendars
the need to compare remained,
perhaps by some quirk
both brother and sister
had a different donkey behind door two,
but like the love that sang through the house
it was stubbornly the same

Little fingers picked
at cheap cardboard corners
and although the stories
never quite hit home,
there was wonder
in the tiny watercolour shepherds

Sitting at our distanced picnic,
a moveable feast in which the scotch eggs
probably have deep significance, I said to you
“We’re only ever inches from the cliff.
If left alone we tread steadily. It’s those
other buggers you have to watch out for.”
and the mist on the windows
stopped us seeing more.

It threatens to shatter,
as the impossibly dark weight pushes on your
jerry-rigged defences,
propped up by the seventeen muscles
straining in your forced smile

but know that inches from your fingertips
and at the end of your sentences
we’re there waiting,
safety nets woven from former grief
which over time has tempered
to be strong enough to lend a hold
to those that need
to you

*******
hear the words from my beak
please
above the chatter and click
of these other feathered *****
as they plead for wheat, sans chaff

every single one of us
the same
except the stupid branch we’ve
ended up perched on,

early or not the worms are earmarked
and the **** always falls down

Hedge sparrows drink the sun
as it wanes
and the draining year passes

they still glean a family happiness
in spite of the closing dark,
a spite richly deserved

listen to their lead and chatter,
ruffle and preen together, apart
as hearts and feathers wait