Under the arches
down on their luck
tucked up in bubble wrap,
troubling no one
minding their own as
the cold day goes on,
are the outcast,
cast out by a time but
not the hands of the clock.

And when the fingers are too numb to
pick at the light that glistens like
dew drops on the windows of night, there's
a light frosting of snow and momentum is set,
moving close to each other to get that
bonus of body heat, the weather beats their faces,
like a whip it leaves traces, lines of its passing
etched and each line surpasses the last,
where they lay wrapped  in the day of the outcast.

And if Summer should come, some never see when
the chains they are bound in are unshackled but
she, Jenny Wren, who used to fly with the best,
unrecognisable now, dressed like the rest in
bubble wrap vests,
will see,
the freedom of the sky from
beneath the blue bridge,
will reach up her fingers to pry
yesterday from her eyes.

Under the arches,  there is a silence,
a reluctance to cry, the
outcasts know but
nobody asks why.