Under a nearby weeping willow | a flock of geese pad and poke
a pushchair rattles along | Alice wipes mud from an off-green park
| bench
two bedlam kids squawking | then she rests
Vicious seagulls hunt for | Exhaust fumes and hums and grinds from
sandwich fragments | the morning motor-rush waft over
Alice fidgets and then heads | a discarded sheet of kitchen roll sticks
off to the rose gardens | to her shoe
The flowers sway like nodding | She listens to echoing Greensleeves again
dogs in the backs of cars | and again piping out from the ice cream van
| over on the promenade
Upwind an old boy fires | it's time to move on
up his acrid briar |
She takes the tarmac path | A brittle crisp packet rattles,
around and up to the rockery | trapped in an exclamation-mark-like tree
tasting the hint of salt |
blown in from the bay |
She wanders through the | Her arms droop by her side
patterns of rocks |
she catches her hand on | Reluctantly, she prepares herself
a clump of nettles | for the long walk home