Out here there is no screen time
There's nothing to distract
There's no Wi-Fi, no 4G signals
Just me and my old back pack

Out here my mind can wander
My feet can wander too
There's no sat nav here to guide me
There's just me and there's just you

Out here I can breath more deeply
Out here I can see clear through
Out here I can speak so freely
Out here I can hear only you

God given songs to angelic tunes
Holier anthems for reflective moods
Soul searching music with eternal themes
Songs from our hearts that harbour old dreams
Movements in light, emerging from dark
Sunrising symphonies, the thrush and the lark
I welcome the chorus here at my dawn
I rise and I stretch and then I press on

Loaf with dignity
and stretch out with long elegance
Rest with intentionality
and stop with full confidence

Pit stop with tenacity
and pause with perfect poise
Lie with all honesty
shut out the demanding noise
and soak in the inner stillness -

for your rest is essential before activity
your meditation before mobility
your self before any sway
over the crowd's frenetic insensitivity.

And oh, the clouds!

Look,
you have the clouds!

This is the shoe where poetry lives
It walks with a tap and the occasional hop and skip
But on Mondays it drags a little on the way to the train station

This is the shoe where poetry lives
Ready to throw a kick but inevitably risking a stubbed toe
Harbouring the memory of a break and the months of limp

This is the shoe where poetry lives
Experimenting with an odd sock, denoting a qwerky outlook
And if you were to examine it's sole you'd find an uneven wear

This is the shoe where poetry lives
Grass stained from ventures along less travelled paths
And carrying scuffs from many climbed boundary walls

This is the shoe where poetry lives
And it sits by the back door ready for the next adventure
Silently jealous of the shoe that was claimed by the dog tonight

A little yeast
A finger hold
A way inside
Shift of control

The counter contagion
The heel coming down
The firm push back
Control of my own

"If we could bottle your personality,
we could poison the whole world," he said,
shaking his head in disbelief.
And my dad laughed
and repeated this
to colleagues
to friends
to family
for years
with a grin.
And no one laughed.

praying to dad, kneeling in the cool of the day, feeling cursed as an olive tree, lost in the red-deep shadows of inevitable choice, looking through tears, years in the making, staring into the stillness of a longest goodnight, with a dry kiss goodbye, facing an undeniable betrayal, secure in the blooded palm of God's hand, in agony