January

Buried beneath the muck and slips of mud

Part frozen, part thawed

Squeezed between a layer cake of root,

Trammelled into soup beneath hoof and boot

A husk without, a tiny seed shrivelled within

From so many years of re-cycling.

The holding pattern before coming in to land

The way station, the motorway tail-back

The meal you cooked that tasted bland

The sleep that refuses to stay long

The clothes you can no longer put on

Sliding across the greasy linoleum of life

Cold flannel, hot towel

Scissored into pieces by the weight of decay

The sweeping hand of time that stays.

The fall of winter, the rise of spring,

A drawn out malingering.

The footfall of to-ing and fro-ing, back and forth

The rush to get nowhere, impatience, slap-dash

The totally unreliable source,

The queues of doom

The waiting rooms

Hanging along the fence and posts of lanes

Spider webs of arteries

Swinging in the winds that blow

Connecting to the beating heart that goes too slow

In the somnambulant tick and whine

A leaf shuddering between time