Changing patterns:

Moisture on the glass,

frost on the grass

and smoke on the breath —

when I was young, feet

in the sub-zero morning

left footprints upon the lawn

 and my hands ached with the cold.

There was the time we found the sheet,

abandoned on the line overnight,

hard as cardboard —

mum gave it a whack with the wrong end

of a broom, the ice fell off

in a sudden burst of laughter.

Buses came late in winter,

pies were too hot at school

and in the afternoon, frozen,

I’d sit before the old briquette heater

hurriedly splicing kindling,

scrunching the newspaper, setting the fire to burn.

Now weather patterns are tamed

except in catastrophes, some days are summer,

then winter and back again;

plants bloom, turn to seed and flower over

as rain sweeps across, disappears

for weeks into months

and comes in flood

like an old man who forgets everything

until he remembers in a torrent of words.

We have caused the world to over-compensate,

I can see it in my garden —

everything adopts a haphazard approach,

falls in despair

then sprouts again with hope;

in the soil, worms gather, witches

around a cauldron, know no matter

the magic they weave

they cannot bring the time that was back.