The Hours

At the window
watching the sun
slope home...way
before curfew...
filigree patterns
spill across my hands
and onto the sill

hearing seconds
pass –
each sweep
of the pendulum
hours stacked, back
to back, as slack
as deckchairs
on a winter’s beach

I want to reach out – grab
with both hands
childhood’s afternoon...

playing gob-stones
beside the kerb –

daredevil rides
down Nightingale Hill;
the swerving,
the breaking
the spill
the bloodied nose

when friends said,
‘Blimey – mate
you got some nerve...
you nearly died!
‘What was it like?’

That look lit their eyes
said it all, and you were ‘it’
for the day, in the days
when everything went by
but time.