Remembering you on your birthday
not on a stormy autumn day
but somewhere along the borderland where
time fades away
like the leafy-mist which drifts 
along the hedge rows on this late 
April dawn recalling time’s past:
emptily, curiously, desperately,
revealing a design hidden
in these swirls of hieroglyphics.

The wood-smoke of one particular fire 
burning our throats on a lost
once-upon-a-time damp autumn morning
so full of life: snatching conkers, swirling
around as we walked through town
up to the posh grammar school. 

Now, the time-ridden
shapelessness of missing-things:
assails me, silently
a fleeting glance into a distant
past:
just something else that can not last.

My mind occupied by grief:
aberrant, obsessed, selfish
wisps of cogitation coagulate
coming into the diffuse light 
of another sad May day.