at night the traffic lights change rapidly almost erratically / cars parked 90° front to kerb their noses grazing the nature strip in a mizzle of rain / it’s autumnal when your taste for news peaks in the morning / then descends sharply through the day until the 11pm news break is sickening

corals speak unambiguously of climate change / why is mars so lopsided magnetically / the broad three-dimensional webs of st andrew’s cross spiders straddle telephone lines again / in the space of waiting created by a knock at the door is autumn / the platform rushing up towards you as a train slows

a desultory cloud trail sits like a smudge of dirt on the horizon / at the end of a song your mind plays automatically the beginning of the next before its first chords sound / in the five previous known extinctions of all life / coral was the first to die / your eyes meet again in the rear vision mirror