Days of a Life

1: CAMBRIDGE ON A FRIDAY


Beating feet in fantasy,

I turn; he slips away

My body and my bike both conspire against me:

What shall I do today?

The sleet fell loud in Market Square

Insidious, the Fenland air.

I lay in my bed at three

And glanced at my watch seven times

In as many seconds.



2: BRADFORD ON A THURSDAY


‘Fluid prose,’ he told me once

But I forgot

Whether that was a good thing

Or not.

A lime-sugar sweet taste

Feet on the stair

I lean back to the mirror

Admire my hair

The soap opera theme tune

Swarms up from below

In the floor-boarded front room

He laughs, and I go

Back to the window

(Dry fingers on the sill)

And gaze down the valley

Which had never seemed so still.



3: CARDIFF ON A MONDAY


The yawning milkman separates

The morning from the night;

Across the rain-stirred reservoir

A flock of geese take flight.

And I have been watching

From my window, from first light.


I shall leave now, quietly

Through the back door

Through the veils of rain

Into the solace of my solitude again.