DON’T FORGET IT’S RUBBISH DAY:

I’m thinking of a lyric, turning it in my head like a pebble
from a beach. I’m pulling it to pieces, got it up on the ramp 
in the garage, changing the tyres, taking it for a spin.
I’m pulling the Wheelie bins up the road, checked the chart 
to make sure I got it right. This week is recycling & Kitchen 
Waste just like I thought, relieved to know the memory is intact 
for another week. I feel like a grown-up, that chart is my litmus 
test, a check on advancing years though I need glasses to read it 
now. 
There’s a thick fog concealing the road this morning, invisible 
cars hiss without showing their faces. Luminous yellow flares  
cross the horizon, move fast towards stations, identities & 
destinations unknown. The carnivores have been busy in the night 
I scrape the remnants of their dinner off the road & slip it 
discretely into the hedgerow. I’m getting my feet wet in dew grass, 
it runs into my trainers, soaks my socks, reminds me I’m alive, 
that I have an opinion & that it’s ‘I like to keep my feet dry’.
It’s a jump start to the day, a way of confirming I’m still up 
for it & then, as if to reward that thought, bird song, more 
beautiful than yesterday, tiny pin pricks of sound hidden in a 
bush of fog.

(K)