Home thoughts of Browning.

Home thoughts of Browning.

I will be here in February

In the sticky humid heat

An electric fan blowing,

Sterile air flowing over the bones of me

Tired as they are

Waiting for my extremities to catch up

With the weariness.

As my heart lingers,

Recalling other times in home counties

Where blue ice melts slowly

The sun limps across a wan sky

Reluctant water drips down from

Victorian gutters

And tiled roofs are still coated in dirty snow

As the first Daffodils break through cold earth,

Celebrating the death of winter

With a flourish.

Dewdrops newly formed

On the ends of red noses

Blue-veined cheeks and chillblained hands

Trench foot

And Salvation Army bands on street corners

Waiting to march down the High Street

Bringing in the sheaves

With breakfast,

The smell of bacon and eggs

The absence of syrup.

It is easy to sit here

In the afternoon, under a clear sky

With the sun, an incandescent

Fireball, ablaze with energy

And drift,

The inertia of the self-absorbed,

The recalcitrant dreamer

The bloody-minded Englishman

Too bolshie to be nice to an evangelist,

Pushing a pamphlet,

Carrying a hint of rapture

And hatred of difference,

Back into his outstretched hand

Watching the smile fall from his eyes

When he realises

I might be an old white guy

But I still have an open mind

Just not to a doctrinaire policy

The religiously rigid,

The self-righteous soldier.

But then again,

I could just sit here

And vaingloriously

Posit the ideals of an old England

Barely recovered from a bout of

Bad politics,

Long after Browning

Posted his home thoughts from abroad.