When I was a man leaning against walls

and that was all I did with my day, the walls:

pebble-dashed, bricked, wood -

I was just a man that leant against walls.

 

At some point something changed and I ceased

to be a man who leant against walls and more

of a man that salted cucumbers.

 

The cucumbers would arrive in packs of ten

and, with method, I would apply the salt,

sure to coat it slowly, evenly.

 

But I knew I couldn’t always be a man that salts

cucumbers, no matter how they are sent –

bubble-wrapped, special delivery, parcelled –

so I started to watch people.

 

The way the red-haired girl in the grey rain jacket

picked her nose that time, slyly wiping it onto the arm of her man.

 

How the flamboyant elderly gentleman

blew his smoke, in a slight twisting moment, away

from the face of the snub-nosed girl.

 

Or the way you curled your lip,

dipped an eyebrow in my direction

and asked me to find the horizon with you.

 

That moment ended my days of being the man

that watched people and now I’m a man

with a woman, with you, in search

of a beautiful vanishing point.