There’s something about April and it’s wide-eyed optimism
that makes me ache for people to be honest
under the languor of hay-fever medicine and an early rise.
Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about sweetness
summed up in the lingering notes of an unrequested apology.
When I was okay, it was good
and every sky, whether cerulean blue or fuzzed by clouds,
was more of a backdrop than an outlook.
These days I don’t go on buses – I don’t go on much these days –
but I’ll be the first to admit when it’s tiresome,
and the last to consider something more vivacious.
In my better moments I’ll chew gum,
watching tall flowers waver in the cool afternoon breeze.
It’s not unusual for me to sleep in too late,
fresh from a mid-evening snack and a three-hour film.
No joke, it’s almost unheard of to wait
more than a week for a new batch to arrive

Perhaps one blissful afternoon you’ll have to take a break
from all the people snapping at your heels
and lounge on your elbows in the park,
rainbow bracelet jingle-jangling on your wrist,
sharing the saddest words in the English language:
mine – unlovable
yours – unkissed

We’ll head off home when the smell of rain fills the four o’clock air,
down past the terraced houses and the creaking swings.
‘Someone’s gate was slamming in the wind last night’ –
and I know you were up late with your parent’s arguing.
I get back ten minutes earlier than you, and all I can think of
is the colour of your t-shirt
and the grass stains on your forearms

In a letter, undated and unsigned, you wrote off and on in cursive:
‘I shall treasure absolutely the days you are not here,
Pushing forward through the briar
And the bramble
And the last-minute shambles spun from old tradition and loaded words.
Your conversation tires me so so quickly.

I wish I’d kept a diary to capture the truths I heard
In flashes at the café,
Forté passages of the Passepied,
Adoring lobby-comments from a Scorsese fan who used to front the box-office
Monday, Tuesday, Friday
But moved on to freer bosses.

Maybe she too got bored,
Treasured the nights the films ran late;
Your time was a privilege she couldn’t afford.
Well, I’m down to my last few coins
And I don’t much feel like paying anymore.
You’re time I can’t afford – a warning I daren’t ignore.’


today I’ll drive the Mid-West;
tomorrow I’ll race my neighbour round the moat.
Come summer I’ll be in bed before sunset
with the duvet half-off and the grey light filtering through the curtains,
but tonight I’ll engage in an off-hand chat
to the soundtrack of birdsong and the fridge-freezer’s hum –
there’s just something about April that lends itself to that.