Transience Every day has ritual: make tea on the Gaz; wash in the public toilets; steal loo roll; unpack and pack – clean clothes on top with dirty underneath, rearrange bits of yesterday to be ready for tomorrow; mouth, jaw and nose fuse and elongate, legs grow thin and compress, feet become claws; make sure the bag is balanced; tie bootlaces tight – bunny ears in double knot; with ease, tendon and muscle stretch and take flight as cryptochromes behind eyes read the magnetic routes of the Earth; fingers count, recount coins in pocket, head holds a mantra: 10, 20, 30 – desperate to reach a hundred, 70, 80, 90 – 70, 80, 90, enough for a can of White Lightening; some nights flying at the wedge-head of geese; others lost in skeins of starlings; and often alone – an owl kills its prey. Each route is open, without boundaries until the shackles of morning’s t r a n s f o rmation into a mule again; home, strapped to back with the past; present held in vacant hands; future shod with well-worn Doctor Marten boots.
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benjamin cusden
