Sun sets behind, same as always
stretching my still unshapen shadow forward

My foot on the pedal presses,
maybe not as hard as before,
but always

The comic line perspective
forced to fit the frame, constricts
but at the same time comforts

Synapses that once crackled, fizzle
and with a little sadness,
still smile

I think about you often,
elusive, the memory is,
a shape-shifter,
when I think it familiar,
amorphous it changes

Other times unbidden
it will rest fully formed on a quiet lap,
a gentle weight of warmth,
until distraction calls
and you’re gone

Remember the need for navigation?
when you rolled your silly guts
outside of this?

I shoulda guessed there’d be
a sorta dumbening
that comes with dark times
sitting in a sofa groove
that coulda been made by Adam

but then whadda I know?
I voted for this,
huh

There was snow and ice before,
a window, pause
of sharp prettiness passing
that petty poets could read a lot into

or just realise that once it’s gone
the garden looks like ****

This simplest trick
this majesty of dropping a degree
or two
and changing water into happiness,
nostalgia,
frozen fingers, cheeks like beacons
mittens heavy with sodden, laughing weight,
your daily haunts

transformed

and yes, the brown sludge days
will come, as always,
but for now the National Lampoon
sledge run past Tumnus
and the boxed delights
can have our hearts and minds

Geese fly by in a V
watched by laid back clouds
coloured flamboyant pink
by a sun that says
“See you tomorrow.”

Fat snow tickled us
and we forgot all that
for a string of heartbeats.

When I first heard the word
existential
I thought “Ooh that’s posh
perhaps I’ll pepper it in conversations,
Bosh! and figure out later
what it means.”

Twonk I was, I only slowly
saw the word existence hidden
in the cleverness of syllables
and then I thought I got it

But not until a maw
began to daily swallow
more than a thousand souls
of families and carers,
teachers, truckers, nurses,
loved
did I become aware

And I was scared.

Not just life being lost
but existence
the whole ****** swirl and fanfare
of little faffs and laughing drunken,
first chuckles, first kisses, first footsteps,
Sunday roasts, broken hearts and ecstasies

The nail-clutch of my anxiety
floored me
but underneath an ember burned
and a fire-question unfurled and grew:

How did we let this be?