I've gone now
Suspicious of the silence within,
Outside all is wild,
Clouds scud the colour of blood.

Sunshine soaks the sky
It is flaming June 
I'm on a barge
Meandering along
Singing a summer song
On a bright mid-summer morn

I hear peals of girlish laughter
Echoing from the banks
Passing under metal bridges ladies
Quiver their parasols, men in top hats,
Like well-paid actors in a film about rivers,
Are over balancing and falling into the river. 

One after another as if this was a deliberate
Act of mass suicide. Which it is.
Bodies splash into the sweet scent
Of grass newly cut and just
Forty-two years old and gloriously confused
She removes her shoes and happily remembers
That wildfires can’t be bought or sold

And so, her yearning, and my love,
born again.