Happy Birthday Phillip.

Slowing walking through the drizzle streets ,
forty odd years, the maze that gentle creeps

Around the people that you know,
who change and dissolve

Into the miasma of showers and,
umbrellered under the gauze of time

What has changed is the clock hand,
not you, who's ticked over love, over line

To come and meet the person here-
glanced at in shots of rainy window shops

Crouching through arch-ways,
cutting through long shots

Looking for presence, in things
I can bring, as gifts of hope

To let you walk, the only way you know,
it's courageous, in a way that shows

Your face: it passed Go again,
and made it,through another year.

Despite the loveless lacking tact,
who clawed at your wounded back

Dawn after dawn, and still,
you came, and faced your fears

As if to scream, stuff you all-
hollow Men, "I'm still here!, another year"

But, come the break in the sky,
the sun lighting rainbows, under which

You may lie, and say:
I could happily, disappear.