draws towards us with heavy paces wears the same cloak on all occasions hides everything we seek except the cinders left lit for us until daybreak

A fucsia stem dips in the slimmest of breezes five bells chime no sound

A crow drifts over morning’s blue clarity holds its wings fully open

are what we claim what we must trail with us when we leave the empty train

once they would bury us with what was needed a bone-toothed comb a clutch of reeds a tiny lamp to find our home

White tarnish on their purple skins. When you taste one, it’s bitterness that moves you.

Better to boil them, souse them with cold spirit, hide them in the drawer you rarely open.

Until you want to know what it’s like this taint of autumn and you drain their ghosts into a ice-ringed glass.

killed no-one it harmed no cats the oldest lie is keep your nose clean your chin below the parapet in short stay put no place like home even when the heart’s no longer in it

I forget sometimes the ground’s thirst. Remember only when the rain’s held off a few days later than they said. It’s often dusk when I traipse in bare feet, feel what the sun has left in the paving and greet the rain barrel with a nod. I let the bound water surge into the can. A kindness I feel. Something stored against the drought. I bless the basil first, let leaves curl down under brief cascades. The plants release a rich smoke of scent. I drift spray to where I think it’s missed. A rose gives up frayed petals in the dark. Sunflowers bow a little deeper at the neck. I push back against the summer’s end.

Here roots reach the air they cannot trust the sand salt water would corrode leave fissures in the spine

they take what sustenance they can through calloused tongues pray in their complex mass for kinder shores to grow