Today I wrote a few notes outside the record shop overlooking the dual carriageway, in Watford, on a grey day in December that could have been a grey day in September, so warm was it. 

I sat outside with a consoling cup of coffee, and ears full of soul-building rhythms from the speaker. Thank god I’m here, thought I, thank god I had the courage to follow my feet to here, when I should be somewhere else, let my brain in my aching skull, under my thinning hair, just sit here, for as long as these songs take to build me back a new soul.

I had no paper, so I wrote on my phone, felt good, consoling like the coffee, to feel the words dropping onto the screen, see that there was some structure coming through which I could use to prop the day on. 

Hair loss I 

The trees show their skins

Without shame, to the cold

They glare back, when we

Hide.

Hair loss II

A shedding of hair is akin to 

A shedding of complacency

When it was there, we noted

It not, when it is gone, weep

We it’s going, alone, without

A cover for our head, our 

Bidding chip for love and more.

Hair loss III

Should I keep a lock of it in a 

Tin in the Watford soil, a relic

Of my time on this earth, past?