Gloaming cross-section

Going along the lanes... hush. Winter in my bowels, black patches cloak this gloaming cross-section, frosted in for these four months - or more - and where thousands of emotions change shape while there’s no light to offer a different, clarifying perspective on them. I go along the lanes... whistling and rattling. Faint fagends of conversations drifting from road to road; I only get the torn-out paper-on-wind after-“can’ts” or “woos”. Some borough parts are thawing out and the dripping water gives the effect similar to if it was running through ramshackle pipe networks lying on the ground in the backstreets. I am very raw. The distances play out what seem to be the earnestly waking thin choruses that will mark out the spring. They are coming to life but I am very raw. I am waiting patiently for my own spring, which is under the soil, but getting very near the surface. Yeah! Somewhere again the choruses begin their drift towards ears, begin a trajectory that will bid to lay the foundations for future anthems. No, not just that, they will be the soul of whatever happens, make these cool dark-blue quiet streets with their constant worldly-but-predatory humming, distinguish them from whatever has gone before. They will become the stitching, samples that seem to rise off the front-garden walls like steam on a really cold March night, dispersing all around into the air. They’ll be part of the place. Sitting in the beer garden under the clearness I hear the timid intonations, ones that are passion cries or loneliness moans... “I feel at home whenever you are near”... or something similar. The blurt of voices altogether gets in the way, makes certain words impossible to hear, so the rest just float by too. Coming in on the wind. Me in the beer garden, giving credence to the maze inside my head, looking for depths in the surrounding zones to match the wild feeling in my chest. But it’s warmish out here, I’ve limited the losses, even if there are minor strands that are still there to be tied up, to be resolved. These bars are opening up, right in front of me, and the unknown is something to wade into, all while throwing my arms up into the air and twirling round to an imaginary far-off beat that sounds as if it’s traffic lights, and laughing. Me and my comrades are carving a little dynasty here, and one with its own unspectacular but complete memories. Creating them to fit in these rooms, to give them flavour, to make them worthwhile. Stored for when the paint starts to peel. When there is no jukebox. Not yet.

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