The Riche brothers and sisters
compile the remainders
of Manchester City programmes
from 1958 onwards, rusted staples asides
in a shuttered room,
Moorhens and crab apple bloom outside
keeps their e bay cottage industry bearable,
residual poverty waxes and wanes,
children always inheriting Granddads' stuff.

abjectness is a form of inroads
toil the Woodlands Trust
all hail no coppiced beeches,
my first sighted R.S.P.B Avocet
the perplexed scale comparable
to competing blank stares,
endorphins withstanding,
clueless  and unconscionable
instinctual pomposity
suffers Nature's either
way.

Augur well, on a left ward spirral.
I never meant to ignore
the residential Wren or lazy Cat,
who always knew better
than my list of dreams.
In the alleyway with dahlias,
I wanted to think as my own,
a perchance a symbol!
now there's sacks of pebble stone and sand,
no rub of green
builders mucking in for someone's joy to settle,
side gate entrance
into a little abode no longer possibly mine.

Wassell with cleft mouth
saw beyond you
pale hand in blue light,
cannot stay here.
Dietrich he would not die for you,
he sees Angels elsewhere.
He'll rather unfurl their muslin robes
under dappled silhouette,
swelling the Danube.

I could write grandeur about Tansy
Orange, Orange like the curtains of my youth
the back yard where my lips sealed onto the Ice Lolly
that capricious Winter.
Until Stones can provide cover
we are urgently bolted to this floor.

I will coil round the Oak and whisper congruity
faster than you can draw breath,
your cochlear will hear
this fulfilment,
long before it is spoken.

a vicarious piety
plays like a swallow's feather,
emerges cats eyes glare
specifically when its us and them,
an overheard soliloquy
by means of the gaoler's
feigned forgiveness -
plays the darkened corridors
the cobwebbed dust venerates
the curtailment  of hope