Sandbourne

Town and team weren't blinded by

the Hilton on the hill,

the previous one's a YMCA now,

remember, and so thickened scales of ennui.

It was fun to mean something

for a while,

it got me up on Saturdays,

Allison, roused by the second half.

Still, I'm hardly home,

I've stoppped prying

for whatever wasn't there,

there is sadness in validation.

Tom, incredulous that I left,

is fond of coke,

his brother, similarly fond,

speaks of intervention.

And yet then 

their noses ran 

at bad little boy school,

mean witted, hormone high.

I saw Paul at his worst,

yet he never saw mine,

so of course 

he stopped texting.

They're sinking back

into the ground now,

so am I, so is the team

and town.

I never stopped leaving

the kiosk where I worked,

also Beales is in trouble,

the buses come twice an hour.

Home has generalised;

I think of the humming farmhands,

nameless bridges,

red bricks, and the thorns that encroach.