When I get there, my friend is fast asleep
with nail clippings scattered on his knee
in the dayroom’s baffled light. I wake him gently.
‘I don’t know where I am.’ ‘You’ve been asleep.’
Homes Under the Hammer is on the BBC.
We manage, once we find his stick, a turn
around the block. He mithers about his hat,
all shifting sand, in peril on the sea.
I take his arm, point out cherry blossom
(petals on a black taxi) as if spring
could blow his mind. But how can he withstand
the rising sea: the broken home, his darling
pottery collection auctioned off to no one
he could know, lovers lost with all hands?
