It can happen, heaven, where it likes

Why does it feel that it is always August,
That we are always on our way
To the garden centre, farm shop or café

Or to that place with the arresting view
Of frilled seascape or patchwork inland plain,
Needing a rest of sorts but without

The leave or means to go particularly far,
But then when we arrive and park
There’s nothing lilac breaking through day’s bars,

Just a feeling of the present hour
Crushed flat with all the air sucked out
And people on the walkways looking contrary,

With faces angled oddly,
And the urgent need to exit quickly, since hell
Is spotting through light’s silvering quite inexplicably?
...