REAR VIEW


Breathe out. Breathe in.


Hang out the family washing;

a semaphore to the kind

observances of neighbours.


A frog leaps refugee cross the lawn

amusing playful cat:

Black games of pause-and-pounce.


Match pegs to the weight

and size of cloth.


That discarded Daily Mail

is re-cycled; wall-to-wall

lining for the guinea hutch.


Not really labour;

not Labour at all.


Winter whispers on the wind:

draw comfort round - a thin veil,

those curtains of self-esteem.


I wait on a rising moon

to silver our skeletal birch;

over rooftops strides Orion,

every other fortnight.


And hold your breath.


ix.1999

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