The daily award went to the sun and the moon
The kept track of keeping count and what occurred.
Less regularly, I would walk alone down a local route
Other times I would find you in tow, wearing either trainers or walking boot.

The walk was a circular affair, like our relationship
Mother and son, friend and altogether familiar way in life.
We would avoid handholding as I was a grown man by now
But keep close in conversation as you were a demure woman somehow.

Like her cardboard sheet that rolled along the road
The City Council dustbin that had been turned over
The oddness of a child’s toy left out for the refuse collector
You never refused to find the same roads more, best and better.

I was seeking the high life and wanted something more extravagant
To compete with family rivals and those enemies who had it all.
We talked and then we walked and kept our time apart
You knew how to counsel me downwards to protect my sacred heart.

Then one day you died and the roads were parted differently
They were all left for me. Some for Mondays, some for Wednesdays
It didn’t matter which day I walked on. The ghost was still forever
And I was as cold as a rainy dance by a tribesman lost for now and ever.

Then I came back to my senses and walked past the shops and their food
Remembering how you nursed me when I was a pauper and being rude;
Professing about how I had nothing and life had treated me unkind
Until Church was where I returned to, on a path that was troubled to find.

AI Summary

It’s a poem about the circular walks you shared with your mother — the trainers, the boots, the cardboard blowing across the road, the overturned dustbin, the child’s toy left for refuse — and how those small, ordinary details became the architecture of your bond; the speaker remembers wanting extravagance, wanting to compete with rivals, wanting a bigger life, while the mother quietly counselled him downward, protecting his heart, until her death broke the circle and left the roads to him alone, each day of the week carrying its own ghost; the poem ends with a return to shops, food, childhood memories of being nursed, and the rediscovery of Church as a place of orientation, a path difficult to find but necessary for healing, grounding the grief in a final gesture of humility and return.