SEPTEMBER RAMBLE

Taking them when I set off

Both ghosts with me today

For some reason I can’t shake

So we walk to the pier and turn east

At the sea

Grey and I wish across it momentarily

But that would be France

And not the right place

The only boats out in the chop

Are the RNLI, training I hope

They seem to be beaten

From this distance

By this wind

You two are not interested

Impatient lumps in my skull

As they tack away on metallic liquid hills

That give ungenerously

Causing a static progress

None of us are going backwards

We leave them

And forage

I am starving

If I found some money

I would buy a chicken from Asda

Get a bus home

Roast in the warmth

Looking for twenty pounds ideally

But it is blowy

Volks made money out of people

Maybe some trapped on this cliff

Wasteful tourists only throw receipts it seems

What are these plants?

Woody with black seed pods like a shepherd’s purse

But umbelliform like hemlock

Lots here dying

Maybe sprayed

I am buffeted

Shall we sing

Somewhere beyond the sea…

And never again will I go sailing

I prefer Summer Wind

From across the sea…

Guess who sighs his lullabies?

No money but my eyes scour the earth

And find reminders of youth

Amidst the fag packets and squished tinnies

That Styrofoam aeroplane without wings

I am a kid in Falinge Park

The sun was there

Not here

Some joke, I can feel you laughing inside

I cannot be arsed with Rottingdean

Although you like it

Not my cuppa

I have gone off scones and jam

So I take you down to use the Ovingdean toilet

Then under St Dunstan’s pass and a walk to Wulfran’s

Corn here strangled by bindweed

The white trumpets

Little kids around a grandad’s neck making him bend

No chance of money now

Away from the litter of Brighton coast visitors

Make it to the church and sit in the graveyard

Who was Steyning Beard?

Volks is here too

There are women in the church

I can hear them laughing

It wouldn’t stop you

But I will not deal with company today

Besides I can always come back

When will you?

Up that hill then to the top

Along the racecourse

And I find harebell and vetchling

Amidst bramble which I defruit

And eat apples from a tree

These soldiers dad

That we used to behead

What are they really called

Some kind of plaintain

Cocks and hens?

I like the old words better

Imagining the latin

I still find it hard between

Hogweed, cow parsley and yarrow

Is it in the leaves?

Enter this upper terrace of the valley

It’s all dirty ragwort

Only because of the horses

And nettle and napweed

But what are these little creepers

A carpet for small coppers and

The clouded yellow?

I am with the larks

Invisible amidst the grey

I feel rain

Do you feel it

You are awfully quiet

Have I been breathing regularly?

Did I forget you there?

I shall go on ahead and see you later then

Toadflax, tiny yellow babies
Hung upon the stalk in their swaddle
Bring my head back to earth

I can walk down Bear Road and through the graveyard

Two in one day

Who will be here?

Not Fanny Heaver

She is in Westmeston

And not Fiji’s greatest sportsman

He is in Rochdale

There is a WH Smith though

Not the same

This one died in 1918

An army grave

I shall go home now

I need to get some milk