Surely you caught in the sour-sweet scent
Late afternoon among the apple trees
Or by the river in the solid flow
Of water through your fingers, with its way
Of moving on yet still being there
Or in the garden shed, sufficient light
Through disintegrated spider curtains
To show you the spade, the fork, patient and upright
Awaiting your hands, or in the attic
With its train that could racket off among the boxes
And then return to you, its rigid banners
Of leaden armies halted in mid-battle.

But no. Tea time. It’s gone.
Conversation? Merely a change in the light?

That unsettling scent
Like a woman who catches up with you in the street
And then walks on.