SQUEEZING OUT SUMMER

We have been here before, prodding at the precipice of a new term. Dog days, the silly season, street corner boredom. Elsewhere riots.

Hedgerows are ripening. Crow armies manoeuvre, black on gold stubble. Thistledown drifts in stillness. Ragwort runs to seed.

Cycling back from the beach, flush with swimming, wheels scrunch on old ballast. In failing light, thoughts scurry home to not be caught out by rain.

A dredger returned, has disgorged its scrapings. Bait diggers harvest the year’s lowest tides. The last, deep salty draughts.

Evening settles in a blackbird chorus cut through by whine of scooters. Bank Holiday sees the first rally of starlings.

Scratching at midge bites, feel the chill on bare limbs. Reach for sweatshirts sooner. The death of a naturalist. Tucked inside his cover, so long forgotten, your letter.

I am taken aback at that courting gift, the insight of its guesswork. Old fence posts burn in our firepit, and we are putting socks back on.

ii.2015

Stopover at The Hog’s Head

It has been, as they say, a while.

Elbows on grain of pine, with English pints we settle

to an earnest unfolding: the maps of our lives.

From a plateau either side of sixty,

we triangulate scarce-remembered reference points.

Draw comfort from the parallels.

School geography – “Never write a word

across a line”. Now I follow contours where bitumen

seals the cracks of least resistance.

A door swings open, slamming closed;

the candle gutters. Wax spots stick to varnish, turning hard,

and my pig’s cheek is wolfed without remark.

Our empty plates are gathered up:

time to pay and go. Pauses signpost then uncharted shores

where old age crumbles into sea. 

But anecdote is not data;

you (as I would) point to local redbrick history.

It says that as things have been they do not remain.

vi.2016

"Now EU want to ban our kettles"

First they came for the kettles, and I did not speak out —

Because I did not drink hot beverages.

Then they came for the toasters, and I did not speak out —

Because I was on a gluten-free diet.

Then they came for the hairdryer, and I did not speak out —

Because I was bald.

Then they came for me — because there were no other unsafe devices left to defuse.

v.2016

with apologies to Pastor Martin Niemöller