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For Christmas, she gave him the city
Wrapped in a tinsel of fairy-lights
Bank baubles twinkling at the wharf
The Shard above as a guiding star
In a firmament of planes and satellites.
Pigeons can be puff-chested angels for today
As the river rolls its slow deep carol
Pumping a hundred hydraulic hearts
Energy flows beneath the pavement-skin
In tunnels tangled with candy-twist cable.
Music is in the bow of every crane
Tube tracks click out the Morse-code beat
A rhythm of barges along the canals
In the noise of streets, the quiet of empty churches
Just for him the city sings its joy.
Sometimes too much contemplation doesn't do anyone any good. The easy joys, the simple pleasures, get lost to view.
It's all very well to think about the sweep of time, the trajectory of a life, the arc of time passing - but there's a different way to look too.
Am I smiling? Right now this second? The answer is yes. And maybe that's all we need to know. It's actually really ridiculously easy to make me happy.
If you thought it was the last time you would see someone, would you do anything differently? Would you say things you wouldn't normally say? Or would you carry on as if everything was normal, and it was just an ordinary day?
I'm never good at goodbyes, not even au revoirs - I'm so concerned I'll get over-emotional that I tend to end up rushing off without really leaving properly. And I never look back: you mustn't. Who would want to turn into a pillar of salt? Or even worse, a person with regrets, who questions their decisions and keeps turning round to contemplate the roads not taken.
I reckon it's best to say the things you've got to say at the time they should be said, in the instant they come into your head (or your heart, or whichever part of the anatomy is running the show at any given juncture). No point in storing things up for a right moment that might never come - as soon as you think something and don't say it, you've probably already missed the right moment.
Don't wait - in this stage of our lives, there are too many reminders that it's later than you think.
If you listen carefully, you'll hear all the things I don't say. It's in the words I don't utter, the emails I don't send, the stories I don't tell.
Silence is a girl's loudest cry.
