Wreaths

Dawn comes in wreaths; a thin day
with a drizzle. Under my tyres'
slow progress wet cobbles tell
the wrong story - a borrowed yarn

I don't care to hear, all substance
elsewhere, lost, far beyond
the bare fields, the dry river and
the blue-grey hills, treeless, keen

as a knife's edge - till the drone
slides down the back of my mind
where my dreams lie, going grubby
and grey with mould. This, then,

is how we die, when the long years
pass unneedful, the days shrunk to
a mere sequence of rituals
with clouds in the morning, and rain.