Wednesday (July)

July, as when a capped man walks his dog the length of windswept parklands. When the sun glares, above rainclouds, its white immensity. When hi-visible workmen in cranes lift impossible weights. When lines in long array of houses show off each decade since 1860. When the sun is covered again by dark grey. When rain threatens. When, multi-branched and bare, trees live out the cold, their seedpods bristling. When train commuters stare inward at their thousand screens of small worlds. When schoolchildren return uphill to The Assignment. When an inch of music starts from an earplug, a memento of Manchester.