WITNESS

The plot is afoot, though nothing obvious observed. It's not right, she said, tight-lipped, standing in the queue for tickets. Turn left at the end of the building. Dreams would arrive and not be dealt with on an immediate basis. Don't assume the trick is to wake with a start in the middle of the night. Red rimmed eyes, suddenly old, the plot not what he thought it was. He could have taken a different road, but the resulting fragment would not of necessity been any further away from scissored nerves. I know it's only longing that makes you turn away.

INSINUATINGLY

Not the smell of sour milk makes you want to vomit. Pursue another line, without direction, without worrying about gun-toting or otherwise. The grey-haired man in the secondhand bookshop you suddenly recognise as your dead father, outfaced by what is now even at this late moment pulling you back into the street and the late afternoon crowd. This is a city you've avoided visiting until now.

EYES OF GOLD

I wondered what was before me, what behind, the knock-on effect, perhaps, of judging it to be a fight to end knowledge - the biting of my tongue could be just that. Another way to say that we are bloated with rotten ideas, ideas which at the time, I, for one, was incapable of abandoning. It was all to do with counting one's thumbs and fingers over and over. But the cool opening into the bare forest. To return to that for a moment. The land we had never seen before. The soft eyes of animals trusting. Once a question of time, now a question of the planet inhabited. The green spark was all together of a one. When the seeking of dirt was ours, that was another dimension. Not caring who found us.

RECOUNT

The first green. Crows squawk away from treetops. In the river, a replica of the branches we walk under, but colder, without colour. A dog wanders, indifferent to rain. You question that 'finally' once more, the husk of our lives swept away by one casual encounter too many. Wine on the terrace. I've been dreading the moment, too terrified to turn, but they are all smiling, glad to see us. What has changed is hardly perceptible. The work is ours.