Author's Reading (requires RealPlayer)

Last off the flight out of Amsterdam,
I was asked, all casual like,
where it was we'd come from...
But the customs officer's sniffer dog
needed no time on some holiday wear.
Passports controlled, we took the Blue Channel
with not a thing, as usual,
(apart from the tiredness, incipient jet lag)
nothing to declare--

except that on these skylines
as in a recurrent dream
ghosts of Burtonwood aerodrome,
a closed asylum's crenellations,
flashes, grassed heaps, road signs
made themselves felt with local tones
painlessly understood.

But mostly it was agitated leaves
flapping at reflections on a window pane,
or late June light that lingers
over heaped cumulus after rain;
like a conversation, rudely interrupted,
they come through with an answer
drawing out what it is to be
in this home again.