He awakes from seasonal slumbers,
to distant rumbles. A storm approaching,
perhaps, or the muffled guns from
the ghost of a war long since waged
upon faded fields.

The dawn chorus wakens the dead and
rattles the brain as the back street clatter
recedes into murmured memory and the
awful truth emerges. Bin day! The revised
collection days due to the Christmas holiday.
Thoughts fly unbidden to the rooms

of recycling, Pennines of packaging,
glaciers of glass, corridors of cardboard and cartons,
growing, overflowing, silently creeping up the staircase,
across the landing, clawing at the bedroom door.
The horror! The horror!

He lies there and tries to collect himself.