fire like a door
opens into time

where we lie
in the cool grass
asleep
in a trap of light

in a trap of light
the moon stares
mesmerised by the city
our hands made
and lost
to the hypnotist
capital
in whose wood we make room
with the wrong light

falling on leaves and falling back
like silent water
pouring from the fire
like a white cat caged with a live dove

a memory can sometimes be a single image, and through that image we remember a whole place or time or situation. this poem is about a time when my friends and i would go into a wood in Osterley Park, in the heart of London’s western suburbs, to light fires, cook food and try to pretend the city wasn’t all around us. the poem came about because the image of the fire and my friends around it kept coming back to me.