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sun swaggers out. I follow the birdsong along the rail-fence avenue, alone, skirting the flood. All of yesterday I was haunted by quarter-century old ghosts, ’till I heard a song on the radio that lifted me out of the mire, a song from those same days. What I thought I wanted never happened, but it’s dumb to pine for something I never knew. And I met other singers, heard other songs. The memory of those encounters should be sweeter than all imagined futures unexplored or barred to me. Step on, no turning back against this planet’s space-flung spin and the paths and turns it gifts you.

and offers glimpses, things you still want to try. Stare to the sparkling sea and I dream of the mountain I’ll soon visit, Ruskin’s noblest cliff, the fabled circumnavigation of the alpine valley eden and nations around its base. Each face a compass point and a white supernal dome of cupped lenticular clouds. If only I was on the tour. But I’m passing through on a three-day pass, hoping for fair weather and a view down the valley. And then on to Pollock, whispers of paint in my rain circles and window gazing, always rushing. It’s the best I can hope for, and just as I’d wished.

over the headlands and return to the lighthouse dorm. Few fellow trampers out on the trails, no sound but the surf and the gulls. Henry IV Part One in my shoulder bag, squashing the ham sarnies and the mini rolls. I’m leaner than Falstaff, don’t lard the land as I pick a route through the marsh, but I’ve spare kilos to shed, the sloth of the desk and garden-gazing hangs about me. I’ll walk on, into the sharp wind, let it knife away the pudge.

would do me, far from the crowd and the business of living, the card machines and holiday bragging. I’ll trade you the three fish I pulled from the bay this morning for a week of breakfasts in the cantina, a few beers each night, gringos will pay sixty dollars for fresh tuna. Who’s never dreamed of being a fisherman? I’ll craft you a book of poems for two months layover in the Chinese House, a camp bed and a stove and the sound of the wind in the cedars.

at the Temple of the Worthy, for a sundowner and lakeside banter. Do only the ruthless win the right to be etched in stone, or can the hapless, the dreamers and lazers earn a place on the crescent? I’ve written some words that mean a lot to me, but can they touch the hearts of others?

number. Roerich claimed the trio of dots in a circle were church, science and art held within infinity. Maybe if I was up at Everest base camp and I saw them daubed on a rock I’d feel the same way? The three ages, the unwritten trilogy, three-piece rock bands always the best, triangles as cornerstone of geometry and Ruskin, three fingers of whisky, my past present and future, here there and everywhere as I pad out for my morning coffee. And three Norns spinning those threads of fate.

I’d like to go again. It teaches you how wide the oceans roll, how little we’ve concreted over, that it’s a joint stock world full of wonders as Melville said, despite all claims and posturings to grab and own. And it teaches you that this planet’s round, the hoop return will change you, ready you for the next time heading out.

where no one goes. It’s a lonely ride into the fog, and more than a mile to the next bridge. Any shape could step out of this white mirk and all I’ve got for protection is my tin bell, to ward off escaped lags and other mythic crazies. But it’s this or the four walls. Those walls drive you out into the fog, to the cafes, galleries, the library and mountain top.

always seems to be one roll away. Was I close, truly, or was it an unbridgeable chasm of might-have-been? It’s galling, that not-knowing, all the pathways with no retracing, just the click of your steps stumbling ever-forward, the tug of the future at your sleeve, an annoying host dragging you from room to room. I try to make future wait, freeze time like Jef Costello lounging in his black-walled room in the titles for Le Samouraï, sound of tyres in the rain and his caged bird’s chirrup. But the clock won’t stop and there’s no hiding, not even in the Paris backstreets or the ocean untamed, it comes knocking for us all, brings the priest and doctor running over the fields in their long coats, as Larkin warned me long ago.

left for students of souls and cities. Night-tryst comedians passed this way, cat burglars and conjurors, anyone and anything you care to read into your objet trouvé. I craft some story of a ghost dicky bow on my way to the miso restaurant, windowsill shrine to a fallen Holywell Street cavalier who’d take taxis to avoid creditors and never quite finished his first, short collection.