An overflowing bin blazoned
with a colourful advert,

an up turned ice cream cone
on a clipped lawn,

slabs of concrete paving,

a cast iron fence with shrubs
overflowing and intertwined,

a vine creeping over and on,

bushes expanding,

a row of mature Scots pine
red against the skyline,

the brooding clouds, plump
and heavy eyed, sullen
with imminent rain,

fleeting blue between, high
and shifting.

A gull rides the buffeting
and for a moment glows white as
gold with the touch of the five o’clock
sun gilding is wing tips

then drops away, plummets to
nothing

leaves only
a cold burnt image
indelible on the retinal sky

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.