Each evening, I roll up my trouser legs
To undo sundry straps of hook and loop
That stand in lieu

There are thoughts that make you tremble,
Thoughts that you can't say,
Thoughts that never leave

The money: well it really counts for nothing,
The thousands that have gone along the way;
The toll

The horse chestnuts
Are betrayed
By browning leaves.

Fungus ages them
Prematurely,

He lies
Flat quiet
In ice
Cooled calm.

They go
Off into
The world
Without him.

The old man
fixes clocks
at the back
of a bookshop;

we're a dying
breed, he

The body erodes with every breath
The picture fades as one by one
The pixels dissolve
No

Snuck into the back pew
Seemed like the right thing to do
When I heard the sad, sorry news
About

Curled up like a dried out leaf,
The wind may break my back.
My skin crumbles to the touch.

My

shatter speaks in pieces
on the ground
my knees bleeding
that heart
once so strongly