Heat goes away
and we remember our austerity
with turned up collars and rotten ideas,
grey respite seems to like us,
invites us to thrive in a familiar taste,
but real or imagined,
passion fruit and mango
stubbornly linger

This pareidolia grips me
with fingers made of nothing

Clouds can’t lie, just are
and what I choose to see is mine

Whether this weather flatters or chides
is all inside, inside

A red kite passed between the sun and I
momentarily delighting with its shadow,
a shrill cry launched at an empty sky, happy

Hot creosote of neighbours fences
smelt of care and the eighties
while my own untreated panels bleached

By the stream, illegal fishermen dawdled
while the world chose not to care
and for now this snow globe held unshook

Battered bookworms
turning a familiar turn
(always left)

For those that leave:
your threads become part of the tapestry,

a picture writ with deep love, excitement, applause,
dire fears and tiredness,

here be dragons and arrows in eyes

but despite the hamfists
of some intrusive hands,

there to see forever

Better than ****** Christmas
this six weeks that we continually justify
that stop our hands breaking,
the dying of hearts and minds

though in the middle
somewhere
when we regain our human form
sometimes storms rage a bit
and we stand, clifftop howling
at an unknown moon

on return we’ll have lost friends, loves,
yet be reborn to care, to teach,
to take the slings and arrows again
from this pauper’s fortune

I’ve never ‘got’ football,
always felt like a bruise
I wasn’t sure how I’d got
or a changing room joke that involved
small ***** or arcane bullying

Perhaps my tutelage was bad
but the pattern in my head
is gammon woven
with misogyny, bigotry
and misunderstood pride

But these boys,
with unhappiness and graft built in,
with ‘other’ credibility,
broad shoulders, tough chins,
make me think that with my time again
I’d have listened

So to them, I opine:
you’ve earned a win,
and have one

Oh, my tired sisters and brothers
I know.
Each and every step and gesture
has hidden lead weights attached
and everything lifted now hurts

You are allowed the involuntary grunt
or voluntary tear as you stand,
all eyes and ears are itchy with
tired

There is still a smile allowed
as long as we keep an end in sight