Sarah St Vincent Welch #above 370 or so - Just past Solstice

just past Solstice

sweeping my neighbour’s gutter

he jokes in his old white bloke way
'You're doing the street sweepers’ job'

we both know they're not coming

it is New Year’s Eve

he is cleaning his car

got his priorities straight

cleanliness is next to godliness

after all

there’s a lot of fuel out here

in our gutters

the winds are coming

at our corner a char 

small campfire in the dust

an enigma we walk past each day

maybe guys chatting in the night

when it's too hot

we speculate

a discarded wheelchair

we don’t understand

sixty new fires sparked overnight

I eye Ganesh at my open door

washed out Hanuman beside

we have a Sacred Heart somewhere

an Ouroborus around our fingers

I carry with me

grandmothers’ rings

it seems sentimental now in this heat

they will always be strangers

we’ve packed our prescriptions

a little water

a couple of changes