CLASSICAL STARTS TO THE DAY

A dawn chorus of rising engine revs. 2 men jump-starting a vehicle that refuses to jump or start. Their colourful language, music in F minor, flows down the hill with all the plaintive wailing of a great composer. I waltz away, wondering if they need a starting Handel...🤔

LOVE, MEMORY AND TIME TRAVEL

There's me thinking Einstein was so bright and always right

That nothing can go faster than the rushing speed of light

But then I thought of memory and then I thought of you

How our warped drives are linked through space and time

(I always knew).

DID YOU HEAR?

At the corner shop there's talk of the small robotic delivery pods that are new to our town.

"They'll never replace humans" says the owner.

"They can't carry much" adds a man.

"They're creepy looking" says another.

I worry that they all get together and talk about us.

THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD

The wind skips looking for cheeks to sting, a playground rumour with nowhere else to be. The artificial darkness of a town before dawn, trying to be nights of old. A cat who lives for the night saunters past. Morning me and he are the changing of the guard, so the rumour goes.

POLAROID DAYS

My back garden is an outline in this developing story of a new day. I flick a light on and suddenly the outlines are inlines. My lawn has lockdown hair, scruffy but manageable. The negative night slowly turns into a positive, Polaroid of a day. If I blow on it will I speed it up?

GUILT

At the corner shop the abandoned mattress is joined by a pile of clothes. I've seen stranger sights in my ordinary town. I once mistook a sleeping human being in a doorway for discarded rags. I had to stop to check, then walked by like everyone else. Maybe that guilt's returned?

TATTY

A tatty mattress is propped at the side of the corner shop. The only sign of spring in the street. Who dumped it there? When? Why was it left there? Is it keeping the corner shop from falling over? An everyday object, out of place. This will take some thinking. I'll sleep on it.

CHANCES OF TIME

the sundials silent shadow dance

is my favourite waste of time

though cloudy days leaves time to chance

for ticks and tocks to shine.

OLD SECRETS

Flashing lights blink at me from an illuminated high street, as I drive by in the murk of morning. I catch vignettes of normality; kids gathering crisps, an old woman surveying a loaf, and a weary-looking man carrying old secrets in his bag.

BROKEN TIME

Let's smash time like a glass bottle

Let's smash it back to sand

We can take that sand

and pour it through

the hourglass

to measure

time.