This Is my N - Leafed Clover

mathematics...tears before bedtime...vivid dreams in bright primary colours...laughing with my pupils in a conspiracy of friendliness devoid of power relations...reading about the past...having my poetry analysed and criticised..listening to Doctor Who music...examinations...not reading the newspapers...walking a riverbank and watching the evening sky in between the branches...arm in arm with a friend...cutting the booze...new car...reading the most beautiful poetry ever written by ten year olds...ignoring the criteria...growing up together with language...getting lost in Reading...loathing and despising that ghastly mixture of nineteenth century gothic and late twentieth century neo-classical pastiche...talking a book with a stranger...learning from someone whose name you'll never know...solving a problem after giving up on it...being passed over for promotion...being left alone, right alone...finding you are the same as someone else...realising humanity is difference, not similarity...casting off the shackles of ideology...hacking away the people who think your private world is their domain...watching a film of demons and seeing them out of the corner of your eye.