The smell of stored apples

 

We knew full well it was a risk

to go back there. Break in.

No one would guess, you said. The old place

still vacant after all, porch light left on

as if to measure nightfall.

 

And knowing how to reach its bolt

the gate, hinge-loose, squeaked open.

A kind of mock welcome.

The grass gone soft where no feet passed,

trees grown crooked, or perhaps just older.

 

Inside the shed the air was sour

with smell of stored apples, long eaten.

Half-clenched, one soil-caked glove

lies on the workbench, a sleeping fist.

An unlaced pair of boots, gaping.

 

Already junk mail curls in the hall,

like unburnt leaves at a bonfire’s edge.

Cold tea stains cling to that cracked mug

left on the kitchen sill.

Dust collects. Our cast-off skin.

 

Briskly tucked in a mantelpiece

your last scrawled shopping list.

What it said, I didn’t ask – the silence was too full.

We touched nothing.

When dawn’s rain came, we swallowed

 

and were gone.

 

vi. 2025

 

painting: 'A Pair of Shoes' - Vincent van Gogh (1886)

A lot to be desired

As day retreats, lights come on in the pinched windows of edgeland. There’s a weary shadow play of sorting laundry, fixing meals before the curtains close. New build. Once marshalling yard, now space for one car each. More for a show home. No bus service.

The fen long drained, its waters tamed, is bound by concrete gutters. Rigid, barren. From the last teardrop of scrub, no-one sees the footpad. He finds the hidden snickets, cuts through dark back alleys. Road signs, all turned about, have just one direction. Out.

He doesn’t look back. Traipses through the town, admires its sandstone features. Cares not what crimes have been committed. Where derelict transmutes to real estate, there’s lure of breezy quayside cafes. Steel and glass. The salt air has no memory; nothing grows in it. 

 

v. 2025

Elephant Hawk-moth

I see that smile just ghostly

 

and wonder how its creases, once familiar, now fold

into your open face. An ocean waits on all we almost said.

 

Comms by postcard, or phone box. Always late. Toothbrush, pencil

and notebook to collect. Remember not to bring ID.

 

Barbed wire rides a long, high fence. Inside we know the silos

hide – concrete, guarded. Uniforms ranked ready at the gate

 

with heavy boots and blue instruction. Nothing they can do

until we move: power hangs like a wind chime in stillness.

 

Bound by preparation we think ourselves unshakable. Yet

for missiles flying over, this land is no more than a map.

 

On some beach, uncharted, there’s a bonfire of resistance.

We unload pebbles from our pockets, float free. Tide-minded

 

never swallow fallout. But rinse our mouths with brine, spit out

those dreams – so rich, so wild, so fast – we cannot taste again.

 

 

v. 2025

 

photomontage - Peter Kennard