Places

Where are you now?
Stretched out
in words
or worse,
suspended.
It's hard to imagine anybody else.
Cursory glance, coffee break, scanner,
the little tickle
at the back of your colleague's throat,
and the view 
that spreads like a circle, remote. 

Condensation on a bus window.
Apples carried down the gutter in a downpour.
Pub, supermarket, blur,
no prizes for the bemused and cold,
no lament for discarded polymers.
Where are you now, friend?
I judged the size of a shop window
and was proven wrong, again. 

How do you move from here to there
over the roots which push up the pavement,
through passages and boxed-up taxi fares?

The shadow receipts
that you stuff in your pocket.
The land that holds its breath,
blue and bold and patient,
counting all that's left. 

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