The last of the summer’s wine.
The last of the summer’s wine.
As evening turns into night
The sound of laughter carries with it
The smell of beer
From the pub on the corner
He can picture the loneliness
Of closing time
Stragglers resisting until the last call
Afraid of venturing out
Retiring to their furnished rooms
The smell of onions and unwashed sheets
He holds his foot steady
Balanced against the toilet bowl
Cutting his toenails
Watching them float, before the flush
Knowing one day he would let them grow
Too long
But not this night
Ritual holds his world together.
In the morning he wakes
To the smell of coffee
Which motivates his senses
Pushes him on, bacon is an assault
Demanding to be eaten
People wait at coffee stands
Others queue for seats
Sometimes he is less determined
To ignore the compunction
So easily felt, to just keep walking
Never to look back
Over the hill, past the old mill
Converted into open plan living
With prestige views across the moor,
He struggles to understand
How
But this once, Victorian powerhouse
Was now a tourist destination,
In the winter it is raining
In summer it is about to.
He walks out over the bridge,
Where the river runs a turgid brown
Last year it claimed the life
Of a college graduate
Who thought he could jump in
From the central arch, too high to drown
Too late to change his mind
On the way down
Sometimes in life
There are no second chances
Even in sleepy old towns
Where the future will often
Pass right through without stopping
And old-timers carry on
Dying wool in the old ways
Even when progress hits them in the face
Futility always seemed to make him smile
He guessed it was what kept him moving
But he knew one day the carriage clock
On the sideboard would stop
And he might not have the heart left in him
To start it up again.
Saturday 14th of May
Only after dark
When the weft of night is thick
With uncertainty
Is there a peculiarity
In the sound of intermittent silence,
Of darkness woven in discord
The chime of a clock
Three floors up
Taking its time to disrupt dreaming
The woosh of an Owl too close
To the window
The brush of a wing snapping
As loudly as a dry stick on a forest floor
Nocturnal animals scurry
In a hurry to plunder ripe fruit
From an overhanging branch
Bouncing against the eaves
Monsters in shadow play
Heavy breathing from within
Echoes of another day
Playing with your memory
Of life before yesterday
When nothing can be undone
How cruel is darkness
When there is not even a pinprick
To show the way
Waiting on tenterhooks
For the first sign of a break
In the agony of rumination
Feigning disinterest,
As silence is consumed
By a growing bloom of sunlight,
With its familiar expectation
Of reprieve
Darkness curled up into a ball
Dozing in a corner
One eye on the clock
A watching brief
Waiting on its ascendance