On my way to buy a paper #102

 Early morning, squeezed betwixt kerbstone and black tarmac of the road, a solitary poppy. Eight inches tall, scarlet petals damp and creased: impossible to deny it embarked on the walk of shame. 

On my way to buy a paper #101

 Bare-headed, seed-blown dandelion stalks, pale-lit against grass verge by early morning sun, appear somewhat ominous; an invasion of listening aliens from another planet.

The metallic, repetitive  squawk of the pub's burglar alarm merely reinforces the impression.

From my window, 4th May

 How black the rain-soaked branches of the rowan

against the new, bright leaves.

God's early morn?

To the east, towering grey clouds

Shiny-edged.

I wait for God's fingers to appear

clutching, and hoping for another ten minutes

before he has to rise.

After lunch

 A from-the-corner-of-my-eye, unfocused glance

startled by a ginger tabby, five feet up the conifer.

While mind throws up a juggle of lunatic explanations

eye looks again

and sees it is dead branch.

Momentarily mistaken

NOT slow, large-scape gathered drops from the gutter

but occasional, errant, unwelcome snow.

Sense of time

 What I took for granted, until a couple of years ago

was my sense of time: waking in the dark, I could usually guess,

accurate to within ten minutes.

In the last two, three years

It's disappeared.

Golden-plus years of marriage

 There's no place nor sense in having conversations we didn't have courage or vocabulary for

in the early days

Not now we've learnt to adjust.

And know kindness - love - is more important.

Slush shapes

Wet overnight snow

rained upon this morning

forms, in places, circles

as if strained through some heavenly colander

Crowded workshop carpark

 Two or maybe three 

(might all be done by mirrors)

shaven-headed, black-fleeced men

directing my reversing

None noticing I'd barely noticed them.