Hope will predominate in every mind, till it has been suppressed by frequent disappointments.
Samuel Johnson
I turn left out of the rain
at Kippo junction,
the windshield clearing to sky and a skim
of swallows over the road like the last few
pages of a 50s story book
where someone is walking home
to the everafter,
touched with the smell of the woods and the barberry
shadows where the boy he left behind
is standing up to his waist in a Quink-blue current,
a burr of water streaming through his hands
in silt italics, touch all hook-and-eye
beneath the swell, and fingers opened wide
to catch what slithers past – the powder-blue
and neon of a surer life than his,
scant as it is, and lost, in the gaze of others.