Mothers sit under
sky blue sun shades
at square wooden tables
covered with patchwork clothes
of pale pink rose garden
and lilac gingham,
sipping hot tea
from white china cups
rimmed with gold
like the edges of a daydream.

A long haired collie,
dignity on soft padded paws,
ignores the sweet lemon scent
of homemade Madeira cake
and milk chocolate melting
in this brief taste of Summer.

He trots by after-school boys
in numbered buttercup-yellow
and meadow-green tee-shirts.
Released to exuberant freedom
with free flowing limbs
they relish the warmth.
and pretend
to be Wayne Rooney,
or Ronaldinho;
heroes of the coming World Cup.


A little girl falls,
grazes her knee,
in a red-railed playground.
Her howls cacophonic
with the high-pitched
twitter of sparrows
and blackbirds unseen
in mottle green sycamore branches
where hard beaks gouge
for luscious grubs
in combat jacket bark.


Across the path
an escaped push-chair
rolls downslope,
almost crashes
into the black metal legs
of the café’s foldaway seats.

The boy inside opens his strawberry
ice-cream smeared mouth
and screams
but his father
diverts disaster just in time.

Tea is 75p, coffee £1.
A chesnut’s branches
caress the white roof,
as leaves cast shadows
across the café’s metal back.

A teenager sings
words lost to the distance
as he plays guitar;
but his voice,
the strum of guitar,
the clapping of friends
and the tap, tap, tapping
of fingers on the skin of a drum
fill the park with rhythm.