Walk the bike up Church Lane and leave the pub
to shrink into the grubby dark. Hit that length of unlit
street where the houses still swim in a wartime blackout
and feel yourself at once alone, that stranger
in the self the darkness brings you back to:
not your day now, but this sixth sense to follow home.
Climb three score steps to the summit of the hill,
at the top turn left past the gothic mansion pile,
tender touch the jasmine’s lace white stars crocheting the wall.
At the single streetlight spotting the pavement
like it’s an empty stage, pass up the offer
of a monologue, with ‘no comment’. Nearly home.
Trundle the bike between two rows of tucked-tight sleeping cars.
Are you glad of your life? Tonight you are.