children on the streets

going back to school once more

serious faces

beautiful creeper

adorning a tree, now dead,

in luscious colour

a rustling of leaves

magpies’ raucous kakking cries

silent slinking cat

scattering of stones

a dyke hand built, calloused hands

back – long since broken

a cat is purring

reverberating, nudging

the tea from my hand

memories as sharp

and dry as grains of sand blown

on a desert wind

peek behind the mask

eyes that see, a heart beating

his poetic soul

with trepidation

I enter a new system

for which no road map