today that pull toward sleep but not-sleep—

rest

the coppice crowns a slide of green
—so very English,
as the seven-four-seven strikes a stave against the blue vault;
a tabula rasa for a new century’s march,
but the sky remains silent to all that effort
to get from one horizon to the next,
the day comes round soon enough anyhow
—so very now

the jet plane’s pendulum of time-equals-money
centres me and any thoughts I had of making
that walk back to Warwickshire and adolescence
vanish to be replaced by equations

of distance over time,
the number of seats for the lucky few,
the price we have to pay
to escape ourselves…