Scarthin's

You runaground Tardis, you old, familiar
whorehouse for the sailor
who doesn't know land from sea,
with your burrows, your dynamite-stuffed
warren, Bigwigs hidden.
I came back, didn't I? And I drank
in a cafe that got stuck in your throat,
and I saw how you had framed a letter
where the handwriting sloped like a landslide
of mill stone, or a beach at eye level,
and I had to take the weight off, and an ancient
Rupert Brooke was tossed to me in the conservatory
where a tree has trapped its arthritic finger
and flyers spring from flyers like swollen tomatoes.
Rain on your skin?
Expect me again, when the weather is foul
I'll come by bike with a strike team