Leaves in the sun

Pile of leaves

here the bottom
and across the pool,
reflections

Seated on a plaid blanket in black bathers, he looks East to where the sun rises. We know when he’s been by the offering at the side of the pool. A perfect duck dive, a bare face and then a clutch of rotting leaves.

He’s not like the ‘serious’ swimmers who toil back and forth with measured stops to check their times or take a drink. While they travel in straight lines, he curves in all directions, diving down into the blue box with the shifting glass ceiling.

One morning I ask him how he is. Eyes set in smile crinkles, he tells me that he is angry; angry with the petty incompetence of his working life and the inability of men and women to rise above mediocrity. Most mornings he is gone before I arrive, but I always know when he has been.

beside an empty pool
a fresh of pile of leaves
catching the sun

Yours and mine

Round and Round in the Circle Game

Yours and mine

It was a long drawn out winter and then such a short, late spring. I’m not sure if I saw the blossoms come and go. As the final separation drew closer, so the paperwork piled higher.

nice and pretty
but my hands are old
in the spring snow

Now, after years orbiting one another, deep space beckons; first a man with a van and a handful of friends, then a truck with a crew from the Ukraine.

sorted into piles
our record collection
once more yours and mine