Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

We were writing a shopping list, tapping phones to light up the time. At 10:59 we fell silent, looked out of the window. Heavy cloud, clearly defined though the sky also stood grey, the sombre limbs of our dead tree, the blur of bird wings chasing for food and territory, this we saw. The pattern of rain on panes that need cleaning. Droplets on hedge-leaves catching a light that’s rising. It’s always this that catches me: just ordinary people, trooped out, and lost so much, just ordinary people, left at home to watch for letters, to dig into the earth, tend the vegetables, the places at the table that are waiting, waiting. I sense all the ghosts, and nothing of vengeance; I am not too afraid to fight but this presence, this tide of loss, it tempers the need. Civilisation seems built on bones. So, here we are. The new bones. What will they build on us? At 11:03 we startle, we chuckle, so lost in the moment. Still - we will not forget.

Rain - an ocean of it Pavements, gardens, us, under this Aquatic. All colours deepen The music of it - a song of falling, of flood: red-gold the leaves that settle in gutters Cold, the windfall apple Cupped in a palm The fragrance of it: spiced Musked, humus: What falls now, nurtures next year’s fruit.