Seven for a Secret Never to be Told

It seems that something is stealing time. I don't mean in the way that it is suddenly March -after all, it has been a long and unwelcome winter- but in the way that I don't seem to have any time. This would be understandable if I was in any way more busy, but nothing has changed at all, and yet, I never seem to find time for anything these days but these scrawled notes of a life; under exposed photographs and degenerating echoes.

Now that I have started writing I discover that my dinner is ready.
I'm sure pasta used to take longer to boil.

(later)
Dinner all finished. Now, where was I?

Having said the above about time, I managed to leave the house early enough for a coffee down at the beach before work this morning. I sat on the stones under a blue sky. Warm sun and watching the seagulls, thinking about last night's dream of finding myself back in Ickenham again, at my old school, being mistaken for a teacher. A crumbling interior, and the roads around the school lined with pine trees, fading in that seemingly obligatory sunset.

The days grow longer, stretching luxuriously into the evening. The shores of spring are, at last glimpsed in the distance. Leaving the burdens of the winter-sea behind us, the price exacted, the toll, we hope, paid.

The winter has been too long, metaphorically, to hope yet, and despite the sun and the calm waters, I cannot help but feel uneasy at the passing of another season. As superstitious as a sailor, I count the magpies of these hours. Salute at the single bird, smile at a pair. Boys, girls, silver, gold.
Perhaps one more than gold.
Lets count...
A lost mirror.
A shadowed attic.
A stolen kiss.
A borrowed time.
A flickering lamp.
A broken map.
A seventh magpie, lost in silence, it's song unheard, and secret never told...