In through a parked doorway

“I just want to get in” cries

The door opens, it is not clear on the threshold

Who maintains the place

Those hard lead contours between the glass pains

Give little idea

It is sad though

To see the unloved

Lost in that big old house

Forward and back 

Sigh

Across the street the people come and go

And through these slats we espied them

Coping seemingly mired

In a cold soup of non-traditional care

A kind of carrier bag life of 

Who pays for it?

Nothing is ever visible, what is maintained how and for what and by who.

The grey light of late October courses through the bones now

That great sloshing as a bus ploughs through some roadside trough

Soaking the unlucky with north London scum

And we skid through corroded catkins caked in goose shit

Thanks to the morning bread man

That always makes me think of Dustin Hoffman in

Midnight Cowboy for a small inconsequential moment on the way down to the valley.