Daddy’s girl, always. Tea done, you fetch Glen’s lead and we climb the hill to the spread of The Links. We talk. It’s as if we have met in a previous life, the click – you, a pipe smoking fan of Bertrand Russell, always think, think, and think the eternal puzzles of existence. Our walks are adventures in language, in invention, a form of The Great Egg Race without eggs.

Your smile
Woke something –
Up.
If you knew,

My reptilian brain calculates the minimum I’ll do to escape
the weight of obligation …

but before I finish the math, we regress into college kids
rushing the street Julia barricades with furniture
to keep out the law by breaking the law.

Night drops by
In a coat of onyx and blue
Lights up his silver pipe
And asks how do you do…

      boudicca you’re a brewery down the road i drank a bottle of your finest on the train back from bury st edmunds the red queen (no one will call you ginger) i see you everywhere realised you were also the wetherspoons round the corner the one with...

tongue it various      from burr to babel      swish to swirl
rushes between buttresses      plaits threads of currents
where swans lord-and-lady-it along the centre
trips over own flow      with
fish-out-of-water flash      salmon’s silver high-jump

This love was. Slowly it becomes formless,
drifting, softening, snakeskin-empty,
the part it has played in who I am now
secreted in a pocket of a coat

      Trespasses Forgive me The E flat on your baby grand (not quite in tune). This same finger in the crack that goes clean through the bungalow’s supporting wall. Then flicking dust from the fringed edge of your floral lampshade. Noticing that they...