After eleven
Walking home
A days heat slackening

Suburbia lies prone and flat
Sound carries at night
Is felt before seen

Across and into the night
The train pushes
It drags echoes from trees, parks, estates

Hammers over bridges, shuddering rails
Inevitable, Unstoppable
Laden with the dark

The containers
They count on
They pass , tolling toward the witching hour

Still walking home
Its getting late

Listening to Finzi
On Tuesday morning
Sudden dense snowfall through February branches
Remembering beautiful Donna
With her red hair
Colder now
Falling , falling , never touching
As clarinet and piano
Take the lonely road.

New recruits must follow
Vibration of the coded dance
Do they see beyond
The divide quark in six dimensions ?
Plumbing the subatomic
Mirroring Shivas ebb and flow
Radiating to OM.

Before sleep, I hear their ghosts
Across the dark, as the air blues
Into the cold hour
Up there beneath Orion
They trace a glint of water
Locked to the lodestone of their fragile skulls
Their winter mother calling them home
Crying Mersey, Mersey

Once through the car park all myths end
Vinyl dragons gone all gums
Drone bored tape loops behind bars

Kids whack each other with blow -up swords
All want to be rightful kings
On this island
Of tooth-rot sweets. key fobs , pencils

Around the square tables
The plastic grail leaks tacky residue
Historys dustbin overflows
We fight a losing battle with wasps

Coach loads bear us away
We were born at the wrong end of time
Here lies England
The sword well and truly sunk

An evening inked in purple , as wewalked
Through slow-hour summer by the still canal
Last bird calls hanging on the threads of light
Hushed cattle at the end of days long field
And on the dusk, the herons silent wing
Ghosted the waters breast to curve , and fade
Grey herald of the spell and rise of moon
To leave us without words, a dying dream

That summer which you did not live to see
We raised our glasses to you on the lawn
And saw the same wings beat across our  sky
Fly past in salutation to the west
And onward , to the sunset of goodbye
Twilight came down , but with us still you fly

Small marraige of fire and moonstone
Autumn lingers in her auburn hair
Perfection steers her eyes
Each movement the proud voyage
On my ship of words