Morningtime

It is...
         the smooth blank slate of morning, moon-bright, blinding. The wind flickers against windowpanes, drives air down past the stained cream white faded white bricks. In the grey morning sky bright birdsong like glitter cracks the air; the people still asleep, breath weighing down the air, waves on sand. At some time somewhere someone flicks switches, the snaps like twigs.
    Now the kettle roars, lights scatter shadows, alarm clocks slip into life- lines of cold clinical bluesound scorching sleep. Fridge door and cupboard door and wardrobe door, knives and spoons and plates: they clatterbang raucous as parrots.
    Still that sodium buzz of light is rising, rising- comfortless, electric, preceding the sun. The sun.

Sorrow

A deserted car park, full of shadows.

Showers of rain fall as though the sky is bleeding,

And two cats are fighting out of sight, wails like anguish sounding.

These ice-cold raindrops are tears

Against my skin.

A journey across London,

Stifling heat and sweat- a train filled with unknown faces.

Then, across the graveyard, grieving mourners gather like leaves.

The air is filled with powerful history-

They have been lost.

They were left behind.

They wept.

Patriotism

I was not in the mood for celebration. Those were rainy days, miserable, bleak, any embers of festivity dampened by fog.
    But some part of the crowd buoyed me. All those people, with their stubborn determination to celebrate, turning parties and concerts into military parades
    Did I search for your face? Maybe. Flashes of faces on TV screens- I catch my breath still. Maybe not.
    I saw a string of bunting fall in the mud. The flags were coated in seconds, but lifted by a hundred raincoat-clad arms in surprising and probably never-to-be-repeated unison.
    Like me, the flags were stained and aged beyond time- but something in the crowd had brought them high. Is this patriotism? No burning fires or stamping feet, but a comfort in knowing not all the stereotypes are false. Even outside, looking in, the earth surrounds you.
    Eons of time and tongues create 'England'... And something in me says: Here. Here is home.

Reflect

Rows of windows reflecting car headlights in the dark. They are like blinking eyes, small suns beamed into the night.
    Parked cars are dormant- lining the edges of the square, surrounding empty space, gleaming metal robots on cobblestones. Only the dust and dirt makes them familiar when caught in daylight; here they are as alien as the moon.
    The lights are luminous fish, swimming from glass to glass and vanishing into swathes of black ocean.
    No music.
    Any sound here would break the peace, any noise but the rush and roar of passing engines. Shut your eyes: it is a beach at midnight. Feel the waves and the breeze they bring.
    Moons in the windows are solid and unmoving, one split into many, each fainter and more blurred than the last.
    When the sun rises, the building catches fire.