Days of a selected length squash against one another
Piling up high 'til the calendar confuses before it organises

First weeks, then months
Stretching ambitions into unusual shapes
Lingering decisions losing their weight
Making way for a wave of minor tasks to take the reins
With scratched-off to-do lists

Bobbing along the surface
Hardly leaving ripples in passing
Doing little more than watching the reflections go by and wondering what might make them

We won't have moments like this again

Not for a while, at least

I haven't tried to slow down for a while
Or given time to thinking or feeling
I don't know where the space lies in my body
The way in which it flows inside me
How it mixes with my thoughts
Or billows with the air
Coming out and coming in

I will look there
At my most recent portrait
Held against every version of myself I have seen watching or staring back
To see how the lines have swelled or bent over time
And see whether I know myself still

The Promise.

The hours pass us by like seconds,
Sifting through our fingertips like grains of sand.
Stretched out over the sullen blades,
Beneath a blazing silver moon.

A gnarled old willow stretches out,
Ready to ******.
But the cold of the night will never reach you,
Wrapped inside a blanket of words and promises.

Ghosts of the weeks past fade amongst the stars,
Burning bright on their final eve,
But a haunting thought teases our mind
From over turmoiled seas foreign soils beckon.

Across the poppy fields the duty-call summons,
The unforgiving imperative rings true
And tears me from your clutches,
****** into the war of a loveless country.

The months crawl on, blurred with loneliness,
I see you waiting at the station for my return,
Instead a grey envelope replaces me,
Abandoning you, alone in the crowd.

And now, shivering on those sullen blades,
You lie there, waiting to join me,
As from afar I watch over you,
Above the waning crescent moon.