Later

there will be rain,

a gun metal sky insists.

Already winding pavements mirror

the street lamps small

tongues of fire.

A solitary walker drifts.

Past skeletal elms,

where a murder of crows

fill the silence

with dark warnings and vows

of vengeance, of ghosts unchained,

of what was and what remains,

when the only constant

is constant change.

And I should have denied or blamed

what I was, what I remain.

As small drops fall on window panes.

harsh words ache again and again.

In Sunday afternoons`

black and white certainty,

I hear Victor Lazlo

begin “La Marseillaise”,

watch steam from a kettle rise

consider love and sacrifice.

And recognise what both have done.

Then a fall of footsteps grow,

far away a quick silver poem

of church bells softly echo.