Street Litter

What’s the best thing you’ve ever found randomly on the street?

A toy car with a dinosaur shell and a Batman mug made the gutter feel like a museum of lost adventures.

The Found Path

On the south slope,
where road, footpath, and trees
lean into one another,

I walk this Roman street
again and again.

Above,
the old Norman church
stands in blackberries and silk flowers;
a rookery stirs,
jackdaws calling.

A raven’s nest
in the redwood.
Chestnuts fall
from gnarly branches,
bright as wet skin,
their green husks
left in the bricks
for beetles, slugs, and snails.

A toy car
with a dinosaur shell,
yellow wheels
glowing in the gutter.

A white mug,
Batman leaping out of the sky
from a bank of violets,
primroses, wild garlic.

Iron, glass, pottery, pebbles,
washed out by a leaking meter,
running down
to the broad river
where it cuts deep
at the bridge.

By the post box:
ground elder, elastic bands, hair ties,
old vapes,
plastic shards,
the dead magpie’s blue-green sheen
and white astonishment.

Conkers, hazelnuts, rosehips,
jack-by-the-hedge.
A shop of chocolate and fizz.
A comb.
Tiny black centipedes.

A thousand-piece jigsaw
of a hundred cats.
Books to read for free.

A glove.
A pair of shoes.
A sock.

And all of it
found,
and all of it
romantic.

Found and Romantic

South-slope road,
rookery cry,
jackdaws swirling
in a Roman sky.

Norman stone,
blackberry vine,
redwood heights
where the ravens dine.

Glossy nuts
on slippery brick,
squirrel-shells
where the beetles click.

A neon toy
in a silted drain,
Batman flying
through the rain.

Wild garlic,
primrose, violet hue,
leaking pipes
where the river grew.

Glassy chips,
pebbles, clay,
carving the bridge
in a rushing spray.

Iron red,
elastic band,
a magpie fallen
on the land.

Rosehip, conker,
hazel, sweet,
the scent of chocolate
on a quiet street.

A thousand pieces,
a hundred cats,
lost shoes,
and forgotten hats.