For Alan

you could walk on lodestones in your bare feet, or on animal bones
grubbed white in the blistering July sun, or on fence-wire scrolled like
snakeskin after a hard summer rain, or on beer bottle caps and fliptops

or on a gravel road marrow with feldspar and potash, cob tacking and railheads
rusted into warps of keel wood, you could not, however, walk on water, or shrug off the pain
or remember a time when life was less complicated and happy, or at least less sad