…walking
on one of those sunny January afternoons before the light goes and warm – a warm breeze, can you believe it – and ploughed fields and sun on soil and you press play, the song you first heard and loved a few days before on a boxset, and sun warm on your face breeze warm on your face – it’s January for fuck’s sake – and usually when you save a song it’s not as good but this is this is and you could stop and sit down and cry because of the song and the sun and the breeze the warm breeze but you keep walking walking and you sing you belt it out – you’re in the middle of nowhere and who cares if anyone hears, they wouldn’t mind and people are on the whole good and you’ll be better too, you will, because why wouldn’t you when life’s this – and you keep walking smiling singing soil sky sunshine 2.49 a boxset it takes your breath away how it somehow all fits in together – didn’t someone famous say that, a writer? – and you could come back tomorrow and it probably wouldn’t be the same but it might, it might, and even if it’s different it might be different in a this-good kind of way and trees and beyond trees there’ll be clouds and cold surely but sun sun and, look, your arms are in the air and you’re walking…
Tim Relf‘s poetry has appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears, The Spectator, Acumen, Bad Lilies, The Rialto, Stand, The Frogmore Papers and The Friday Poem. He’s had three novels published – the most recent by Penguin, which has now been translated into 20 languages. He is 2023 poet-in-residence at Leicester Botanic Garden.