Waterfalls of your everlasting memories
Flood down, pooling into pre-existing floods
Of stories, you left behind
Words I could never seem to understand
Memoirs of pain and grief that lay dormant on my skin
I swim in the ocean of teary-eyed nights
That colour these passages
Trying to decipher, trying to find the beginning
But every time I dip my fingers into these cascading waves
My eyes always seem to latch on to the moonlight
That you left behind
And stars that fluoresce with remediated happiness

The waters turn to sand
And I sit in this empty space
Echoing the future to your dissipating anguish

With leaves fireworking
their last defiant blaze
against grey skies and the mud,
once again I forget to remember

the muted tannoy announces silence
for customers and staff
and the surreal descends
among the tins of peas and carrots

where the absence of the normal clatter
suddenly roars, catches in my throat,
the plaintive, Sally Army bugler
scoring the sadness in these aisles,
these isles

with two minutes passed,
the cacophony of the tide
of plant based diets
and too early Stollen returns
to wash over, to forget

A beautiful sunset
A whispering breeze
Birdsong in the morning
Blossoming trees

Green buds in Springtime
The summer sun’s glow
Red leaves in Autumn
The crunch of crisp snow

The sky’s brightest star
A sparkly moon
The lilting melody
From a favourite tune

You may not be around
But you’re always still here
Every second, every minute
Each day, week, month, year.

Remember when we’d fly kites
And your hands bled from the wire
We used to talk about dreams
As you bandaged your cuts
Ready to fly them again

We drifted with each other's names
Still sewn into our hearts
I think back to those days
Praying that every dream I could never reach
Has found you instead
And that they walk with you every step
The distances I could not go
For you

The winds from where you grew up
Strike conversations at midnight
Your thoughts, now paper planes
Take off into memory lanes
And your feet, aching soles
Search for branches, and petals
That remind you of home
The taste of sweet dates still dancing on your tongue
Sweet syrup stretches its limbs
Through your nose
Sensations of a past soaked in white noise
When did you leave it behind?
And you think back to the time
When you walked with your naïve self
Too young to comprehend
Back onto a boat
In those dreams that never escape you
Called memories

Countless poppies now grow
Where men had once stood,
Or had peered from a dugout,
Or had hidden in a wood,
Where bullets had hailed and
Young lives were squandered,
As poisoned gas smothered
And big guns thundered,
Those in charge must have surely
Questioned and pondered.

Poppies grow in peace now,
Gunfire no longer heard,
Let this be the case forever
For PEACE - is the golden word.

I met a cat
a few weeks ago
black and white
on the city sidewalk
collarless in
the deserted evening.
I stopped
yards away,
no chasing
crouched down
stretched my hand out
she hesitated
I smiled
𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘦, 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘦, 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘩 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦
she stepped cautiously to me
I stroked her back
scratched between black
ears and then
she went her way
and I went mine
and only one of us looked back.