On a Sunday afternoon:
A walk in the woods
but cars are still heard
Hoped we’d get lost
but we came full circle
and met up with them again.
Hot sunny day
everybody is away
‘cept us (and people playing cricket on the green and some people watching them)
And that’s nice.
(Later: night, black wind blows black trees
As classical music is heard in the background and Big Ben says 3am.
It’s right that the trees are heard on top
(except when there’s an especially nice piece)).
(Now everybody is away and asleep
As they should be.
Ah, treetops blowing cos of the wind.
That’s enough to keep my hatred of everyone at bay
And to feel calm and lost and warm and cold.
Hark! the venetian blind tilts back and forth rattling,
And my door almost does likewise.)

It felt nice this afternoon.
Hot, sunny, but yet a cool small breeze, relaxed and happy and light.
Walking in the woods with a woman I didn’t know.
Some small paths and much mottled shade courtesy of the trees. Almost wilderness and one magic moment when a cross-roads of little paths is before us and we stop and look and look then look at each other and laugh and she laughs, her eyes laugh, big and deep and gorgeous and sparkling. I’d seen the woods lots of times but they seemed new with a new person, talking and walking.

I spied a magpie and said it was bad luck. She spied another though it may have been the same one but we weren’t to know so it was good luck. She was a nice person so I didn’t really stop to notice if her breasts were big or not. Thought we’d gotten lost but we came full circle and met with the others which was a shame.

I might have been nervous so I said stupid things like: don’t you reckon pigeons sit like cats, because there was a pigeon sitting on a lawn. She didn’t answer directly: “I've never seen a pigeon sitting before, maybe it’s injured.” Maybe it was. But sitting pigeons or ducks floating on a lake always remind me of my now dead cat, Rocky. I’ve walked through many woods with several or more women but this was different because I didn’t know her and maybe I’d like to. In England, these sorts of things always happen on Sundays. No, but she was happy to be going home and I wasn’t. After, she kissed the others on their cheeks, but not me. The last time I was kissed was by a woman who wouldn’t take her sunglasses off but that was in the Ourika valley which is about 40k south of Marrakesh, Morocco and it was because the sun hurt her eyes, unless you count kissing Michael in Barcelona, Spain but that was only because we both had beards at the time and wanted to see what it was like with beards and it wasn’t very nice.

(London, 1995)