Another morning

I awake and shake

My tired head

Warm the old

Cold coffee

That’s when the panic hits me

‘My God!, you lunatic!

What have you done?

Look what you wrote!

Do you remember what you said?

You imagined it all! ‘

A dreadful waking fever dream

Curse these amygdalan frenzies

Shall I regurgitate those tired old tropes?

Barbary apes, Rule Britannia

Mottled Utrechtian paper

With the keen eye of a British expatriate

For the bleeding obvious

Yet, when I see Gibraltar my heart swells

Not just with

Tales of past victories, sieges endured,

Ramparts withstanding, bastions defended

Or something half remembered

Palpitating

Shiver of sea

Sparkling splinter of

Numinous ocean

Gifted personality

The Great Green

Divested of all terror

Its playfulness distilled to

Living livery of wave

I return new-born

With Dawn’s

Rose fingered bloom

To find you

Hoping you will

Humour me

(It is you who decides

whether we shall meet