In dappled light
beneath the Linden

Hans Biebow the Mayor
circling his temples

tries to still his thoughts
Thoughts that want to fly

They ask too much
Perhaps they are insane

How can he hold 
ten thousand sparrows?

Junior Blackwood
was not like all the others

who were more like children
who needed guidance

sometimes encouragement
sometimes a firm hand

who when the time came
had let the colony go to hell

You wouldn't recognise the farm

who walked right in
as soon as we had gone

as if it was nothing
as if they owned the place

Corporal Junior Blackwood 
was different

because my father said he was
He claimed him as his friend

right up until the day
he changed his name

mid-seventies perhaps
navy blue cap with Tiger Beer in gold
tan leather document bag
slung across his shoulder
enters the public bar
is welcomed by the barman
orders half a cider with ice
and settles at the next table

I've seen him before
We are on nodding terms

From the leather bag
he pulls a smaller one
bright green, duster soft
From this he lifts his tablet
takes a sip and starts to write
tap-tapping with his index finger
He sees me watching and smiles
and so I ask

What is it you're writing
essay, novel, poetry?

Still smiling, he tells me
No, I'm writing to
an ex-student of mine
a young woman in Thailand
telling her what I'm thinking
how beautiful she is
Very beautiful
like all the girls over there

around a blind bend
on a narrow mountain road
a local teen
on a child's motorcycle
topless
helmet-less
tab-end in his gob
sporting an almost moustache
(think threadbare Errol Flynn)
doesn't miss a beat
jinks around us and is gone
beyond a cloud of dust
trailing blue smoke

The Police car came
and took away the boy next door
the youngest
who is in his early twenties
who loses it some days 
who yells at his mother
whose father left months ago
who yells in English not in Arabic
who argues with himself
who wears circles in the lawn
who would rather not meet you
who is infinitely polite
who stutters when he speaks
who has restless eyes
who they say thinks in numbers
who is something of a maths wiz
who sees patterns in everything

I bought a loaf of bread
a Peter Nairn white blomer

'Best bread from Scotland
Wrapped the old fashioned way!'

I used it to make toast
spread with lots of butter

and thick-cut marmalade
by Keiller of Dundee

It tasted heavenly

Nothing tastes that good
It must have been a dream

********************

I googled -no such loaf
I don't believe in heaven

and I only eat brown bread

If Keiller marmalade is real
then who is Peter Nairn?

laden with green fruit
a headless pigeon
the rot setting in
Possibly a fox
probably our cat
stealthy or
just plain lucky
the pigeon drunk on grain
dreaming its head off

Clattering through branches
old heron makes another
crappy landing

Do they dream
of Hudson Bay
of long migrations
of vastness
of mountain air
of howls that carry
far enough to proclaim 
its us
and we are here
and all of this is ours
this lake, these slopes, these trees
as far as you can see
as far as we can run?

I was sat half-listening
to something 
somebody was saying
when time slowed
just long enough
for me to understand
that the blue-grey blur
high and to my right
was a juvenile rocket bird
testing its engines