Driving to my canal walk I see a party of parked cars,
a garage sale, holiday board games on my list.
A young couple moving to Queensland for work.
Spotting a demurely coquettish teapot
plus the happenstance of a dollar five-games-in-one box
I tell their owners I have done what they are doing,
offer encouragement, pay three dollars towards
this next phase of their adventure together.
In my car the box plans quiet holidays with the teapot.
 
I head off down the canal path thinking of my own
sell-up-and-leave trip north in the published past
and beyond, a carpark in the shadow of the cathedral
in Strasbourg where, for a pittance, hustlers sold me
a vase of carved maidens with a hole in it, now
on my busy desk, balm for the impossibility of forever.
To head north.  To sit at scarred tables, begin again.
Teapot, vase, ripples downstream, all gorgeous.