Year End

Dogs recognize me, own me, cats tolerate the space I move in. Long nights have concertinaed the days into narrowing perspectives, yet still a pencil thin sunrise is worth getting up for. I hear a train coming it is loaded with happy waving children; they lean out of the window their gaily colored scarves fly in the wind. O no, another train coming fast on the opposite track. O no, everyone is headless. I am headless even though I was not on the train. The dogs are yelping, the cats are as stiff as statues. My eyes are half-open like train carriage windows. My head is rolling now into 2020, apart from the sink holes, fault lines and cliff edges, it will be, of course, all downhill, and I'm thinking: 'it's great to be alive.'