A Poem by Adrian Masters

Walking past the secure unit

Then your steps falter
at a shout from the secure unit,

at the sandpaper sound
of a cockerel crowing from an allotment,

at the synthesiser pulse
of fledgling jackdaws.

Then your hand slips in air
where the fence is broken.

Don’t broken fences show
where other paths should be?

Beneath your feet, catkins on concrete
curl like crumbling chrysalids.

Behind, another shout from the secure unit,
another crow from the allotment.

Adrian Masters is a longstanding journalist living and working in Wales. Away from the daily news cycle, his poems have appeared in Bad Lilies and The Lonely Crowd and have been performed at the Rainham Poetry Festival.