As I sat in the café,
and said to myself,
'Coffee's bad for the health,
but can it be worse than tea'

What to write about cafes?
The smell of the food
induces a mood,
a feeling that life is free.

At the end of a long walled garden,
where predators lie in wait,
there's a place for birds, a haven,
a table with food as bait.

Children frighten the birds away,
not meaning any harm,
but predators wait with charm as bait,
stalking children at play.

Laying on piled spines,
pages as blankets,
we stack books against the sun

so we can dream sweetly through the morning.

And when we're rested,
we can take down these bricks we've laid, one at a time,
the brightness of the sky filling our space, strip by strip.

We will take the stories from their towers
read them together,
and then decide
that it's far better to be awake in the light
than to be only a shared dream.

I'm at the forge again today
heating beating hammering away.
But words don't come without cliché
so I must let them run and play.

Playtime's hard upon the desk
these walls are hardly picturesque
the shape is wrought the work annealing
a product of poetic feeling.

They're making cuts
The office shuts
The workshop's still
There's time to ****.

What shall I do
With nothing due
I'll start again
But how and when.

Forget me not
You're all I've got
We'll see it through
If you'll be true.

If we trust our peace to a peace maker
to whom or what do we trust our time?
Maybe it's a watch alarm or beeper
in work or play until our final chime.

Time may be measured even treasured
though never really saved or enslaved.
Now long now short now spent now pressured
sometimes borrowed bided always craved.

It has no substance but is the essence
whose tincture tipples us into truculence
perhaps some paranoid pretence
amidst much of irrelevance.

Isn’t physically quick or agile.

Disappears in libraries.

Has been known to dissolve into the physical pages of books.

Is good at tucking herself into the stacks and retreating to reading nooks.

Blends in at coffee shops where her voice can be drowned out by the grinding and the steaming.

Can become indistinguishable in the dark of theatres, in the quiet shuffle of art galleries, the finger-snapping of poetry readings, the hum and jostle of the Tube.

Is indistinct. Adept at hiding in plain sight.