Count The Rings

Rising like a bog man
Out of the muck
You’re facing the jagged wall
And all the birds are chiming
I keep thinking about sticky eyes...?
I used to get it all the time
When I was a kid
In the late 1990s
Maybe it’s just something you grow out?

I want to be authentic like the cave
Like the woods and all the wildlife
Within it
But I’m stricken with second thoughts
And paranoid I might get Lyme’s disease
From sitting in the grass
You still looked really great
Even though you’d slept amongst the rocks
But you wouldn’t know it
You wouldn’t know it

Dad picks me up
In his blue Nissan Micra
I’ve never felt these effects before
The smell of Sunday papers
Rises like an orchestra
And I fall asleep on the couch

Everybody peels away
Until it’s just me and Jack
Leaning outside the grey stone finish
Of the posh estate agents
And he goes home and my sore head
Fills up with summer air

I want to be authentic like the cave
But I’m not sure if that’s what you are into
I’ve been more or less well behaved
I don’t want to start smoking marijuana
Under lean-tos
And that “I love you”
You said to me in the shed
I think the Buckfast had just gone
To your head

I count the rings of the felled oak of romance
As the dawn light sweeps across the yarrow
I’m not ashamed
That I never grasped the nettle
Why take the risk?
When your chances of success
Are pretty narrow