Ownership

 

And so I walked

away from the

city towards the

convex horizon,

crossing fields and

streams and hills.

 

My companions?

 

Two hawks;

seven walkers;

a photographer;

a grass snake;

various cattle;

some dogs and

 

the evidence of others:

 

sawn logs in piles;

fences, the hum

and snap of

telephone wires;

the distant rumble

of Sunday-straight roads.

 

But all mine (in that

I spoke to no one: no

one broke the spell)

 

It all belongs to me.

 

Pipes

 

We would walk past

a fairly ragged track

to blue flood gates

and a sandstone wall

that lines the tow path.

 

It was here that we used

to go to smoke at school.

Among the lime trees that

were planted in the tarmac:

good visibility.  Protected.

 

The first cigarette I smoked

was a Dunhill stolen from my

Grandmother in the days

when she still lived with us,

shortly before the fire.

 

But really we smoked what

we could: cigars, cigarettes,

loosely built roll-ups and

some of us even bought

pipes. Short-stalked-adults.

 

And so we would stand,

four of us, all but gone

now, our pipes filled with

flotsam, grimacing through

the enjoyment of it all;

 

unsure of what we were

doing: whether it was right

or wrong, but, haloed

in our exhausted cloud,

another world was opening.