A dampness spreads across the duvet - plop, the rhythm ticks away in sleepless drops of time, until my clock bell rings out loud. Then groping, reaching, fumbling, I find stop.
Surrounded by my polyester cloud, its cozy white insomniac soft shroud turns starkly freezing, waiting for the light. Another rocky field waits to be ploughed.
Against the bed’s warm gravity, I fight to rise and face the early, bright sunlight; still sleepy, battle to the bedroom door and end my long and wakeful, antsy night.
In stretching daylight hours, I fight a war to keep the grey at bay, using my store of energy to keep me swimming, or exhausted drown in waking sleep once more.
His hands encompass: pulling me from dirt my terracotta wetness coats his palms infusing nails and joints with ochre clay. A ball of damp adobe, thunk, I’m thrown, the wheel begins its spin, his fingers grasp irregular alluvium, I'm smoothed as digits delve into my focal point their pressure firmly moulding, shaping me into a vase, a ***, a water jug to be what his imagination holds.
Cracked sienna and burnt umber bark on trees fuzzy with blue green lichen, like the stark, leafless, winter clothes, of Highgate’s denizens.
Hazel branches stripped bare by squirrels a foodless frosty park, it’s Victorian bowling green surrounded by golden paths and benches is wild, broken, neglected grass and concrete.
Exposed on the grass a hungry squirrel gnaws her nut sees danger and runs up a tree. A dog barks and tries to climb, loses interest, and sniffs the inner city's air.
The park whimpers deprivation.
Another version of the poem about Highgate park this time in free verse.