A moment on a morning street in Town
That petalled day of doorways and dream-travellers
Staring at the unimagined light
Holding shabbed down crowns
And fading sceptres of themselves
Towards the day that also sheds
Its blankets. rising to the sky, the churches and
All breath,
All life.

You were sitting, waiting, on a wall
At dusk
Long legs swinging, idle, lovely
In the slowing day and half light of
The trees.

I saw the hair, the hands, the don't care
Look, but your head was raised and saw
Beyond the passing and the dust
To sparkling times that were so surely there
To find tomorrow.

You watch the words with me no longer.
They left in early sunshine
Neither of us
Wanted.

A seeing that conjures what it most desires:
A solemn gathering of words that lift
To music always waiting listening
For you.

The words are  there to find
At heart of matter in the pristine time
Our imaginations inhabit yet -

But now in recollected stillness.
As I watch you walk away and fade
Between the trees,
And tangled undergrowth of waking life.

He moves them forward so sensitively.
Palms spread: firmly gently, shielding ushering
To the front
Each small dark group with grieving wreathes.

As they advance he swings behind another
-Almost jaunty light he moves -
Till time is right, and then again
They go to place against the stone

More flowers.

A splinter of time is felt in carpet treads
And your smiling question look
When you know exactly what it is
I want
As you are always there in tails of light
From ivy shining gold on
Waiting trees in evening's thinning presence

As I wait now.

And from this place I watch myself
And see the knots and pain so clear:
They are all the meals I eat that
Parents ate that all the silent unnamed
Faces round this table now
That were and breathed and tasted morning air,
And are not.

Breathe through me.

Now feel all they meant to say.

I stroke words with mouse's arrow -
But feel no easy daylight common sense,
Blessed and cursed to know
Elating separation from the scrabbles
In shallow city seas of present
Struggle to survive and breed.

And yes I know there will be more -
More fresh and blue high wakening days;
While earths of slow engendering wait
Content to breathe alone until I
Stop

To breathe with them.

We start.
Talking
And sort of...
Running.

At the first climb
We stop, breathing
Heavily - both dead, but for a comma -
And look at concrete under our feet
and windmills turning distant on the hill.

You OK?
Yes.

Start again.
on the Way now
Hawthorn and mud beside us and new green in the fields.
Easier victories of pace and breath alongside talk.
Of Warburtons and nuts and bolts.
Getting into it now
Feeling good - seeing green, paces flow
And rocky styles and sloping fields made possible.

'To that edge?'
'OK'
- Our version of sprinting -
Across the hard ridged grass
To an upward sloping wall corner,
And now the first real pain in chest and legs.  Briefly desperate.  
But another topic turns words to distance
Along a gully and narrow treed ridge
To another climb.
Our brief paces stab the ground.
Paces
To
Keep
Going

No words now.
Nothing but
Splitting lungs.
We push unforgiving gravity
Up a turning track
Going up
Still going up and around

The agony of contrasts -
Pale glorious clouds lift late sky colours of rose and blue
- While we are slow and heavy torments of road, and stones, and bones.

Can see the lookout now at Royd
We can do it
We can.
Can I...?

*******

Christ.

Doubled up gasping clutching the wall
Try to read the tourist sign's shaking print -
- may it stop the pounding -
But hearing also that eerie sweeping close now, and the gears -
A dizzying look up at the spinning blades

Can't believe we've got this high...

But no rest - chill of early Sping
Tells us not to linger with our light going:
Shadowing will be the woods:
Drawing up dark between the trees,
And we're not there yet.

Easy now.  
"Doing OK?"
"Doing OK."
We float along high fields and farms and light and words
How many milliseconds for hot cross bun dough?
How about a Triumph Triple?
(And you can forget electric scooters in Brighouse)

While late March branches hint at leaves
In the narrow lane we half run-walk
- Across another field - and under a quietening sky
A dark downward flight through trees to tarmac, street lights and...  

The Big Finish

- Aches gone and tiring feet forgotten
In a final dash to the pub.

Briefly arching for air over the car.

"Not bad -"
"No - Not bad at all"
Whose turn is it?
(That Third Person never buys a pint)

Lager?
Yes.
Nuts?


Definitely.


*                *      ­          *


Postscript:
          -  And however long or short, I will still have run with Neil                
                                  across those sloping fields with the light
                                          and the words and the hedges -

Sometimes I can go to that place where everything
Is beautiful
Or fascinating
Or wondrous.
Even my father's encroaching depression,
Following us
Up the green sweeps of the golf course
As we tramped together
With the words slowly failing
Between us

I could cry at that now.
I could not cry then.

Finally it stood beside us
Baleful.
Then coldly with us
In the back seat of the car
All the way home.