Night Blindness

Intro: up to 50 words (delete this text and enter your own)


To live is to love.
To love is to start to die.
Love heals as it kills.
Its absence too is crippling
an ironic paradox.

The city streets run 
thick with careworn shuffling souls.
Summer dressed widows,
winsome flowers in their hair, 
out scouting for a partner,

a man to care for,
a man to cook a roast for,
but not to clean for,
and not for sex. None of that,
they’ve seen far too much of ‘that’.

Old men, dull and creased.
Spectacularly average 
in unmatched socks, cheap
drab jackets and shabby jeans
pocket their half-smoked rollies,

dock their bikes outside
all day breakfast cheap cafes,
awkward at check outs
they fumble in dead wives’ purses
for coppers for beans and bread.

Ah but it’s summer,
bright sunshine has fetched them out.
A chance to connect,
that is wasted on them, they’re
blind – accustomed to the dark.