This marching, these banners, remind me of Tot,

gently spoken and dreadlocked, who once offered

to construct a house for our kids in the tree

at the end of our garden. He’d protested at

the Newbury bypass, built and inhabited

his own tree-house, so we figured he’d take

just a few days or so. He laboured all summer,

hampered somewhat by a refusal to hammer

nails into wood because of the pain that caused

the tree, and a penchant for stopping and staring

at the world from his heightened aspect.

He dropped dead last year, only 57,

a heart attack busking outside the train station.

His partner crowd-funded to pay for the wake

and that would have met his approval.

It was unlike him to exit so quickly, she said,

but he’d never have stood for a bypass.