It was like that angst in the chest
you mentioned, but then it exploded.
My self was in a hundred fragments.
All I had was a bed and a skylight,
a window on the incomprehensible.
Drifting off, I muddled cliffs and gardens:
Was it West Bay, Lyme Regis or Sidmouth?
Football grounds merged: part Brunton Park,
part Craven Cottage, part kickabout
at the old MK hockey stadium
with Oxford United reserves –
or were they off duty cinema workers?
About 12 0′ Clock, somehow scrambling up
for toast and a roll up, with a roll down
whiteboard scattergraph of faults,
their points the day’s shielded stars
all isolated from their cause,
it was like that angst in the chest again,
but then it broke. Now you’re out
at this car park. ‘No fear’ and ‘One life: live it’
on the back of a Mitsubishi Warrior,
deep azure ocean beneath wild camping grounds
picked up in the eyes and a blue O’Neill shirt.
This new hope is tentative. Will there be enough
finding gaps between or augmenting major league
prescription drugs, all the dietary limitations,
the social times for which you’re out of action?
It was like that angst, but then it broke
from its containment, lost its physical presence
to all our winding rivers of memory,
took root in close family and distant friends.
I can’t describe the feeling so say ‘fixed’
and ‘broken’, currents surging to a tsunami.
I sometimes wish there was a sole conductor
to form a single melody from all our memories.
Wilderspool Causeway 