Summer Evening, an Essex poem

the constant chirruping
as tired sun relaxes on
the stalks of heather pushing up
between rusted oddments

this is the summer-baked south east
in all its lack of cogent form

it’s in the train station
where someone’s placed a mattress and
littered beer cans and bags around

the detritus that follows everyone
even the homeless
hopeless
drunk

I write the same poem
always and time again

(don’t think I don’t know that)

but only because
I look at witch country
and can’t fathom
just what I find so painful and
enticing in its raggedy scrubland

and crooked promenades
and old leaning buildings
and churches like a beacon in
the shifting modernising sea