Fragments of a Trip Alone to Stanmer Park

The wind is violent through summer-trees. Outside of one wood, I look back at the darkness inside. I nearly fall asleep on the grass after lunch. I see no-one for hours, only a solitary cyclist. White paths, tree-darkness, spinney-islands. I watch the clouds rush past, cover and uncover the sun. The wind through the leaves is like a hissing and an earthquake, the collapse of something huge.
I remember coming here in my first year of Brighton, with those people I knew from Southampton days; Jim, Mick and Dave, and their friends too, people whom I'm not sure I would even recognise if I saw them now. Later on I would come here with Paul, before he was lost to schizophrenia, then Andy and Joe and Al. There is a photograph of Joe and myself leaning against a cart by a barn somewhere about. The cart and barn are still there, nearly three years later. Then last year, coming here with Em, but this is the first time I have come alone.
Waiting for the bus back to Brighton, the endless rush of cars, the bright and violent sun, the wind dropping, and the air tasting of asphalt-jewels and petrol.
The bus was busy and full of students.
I stared out of the window at the road that led to where I first lived when I moved to Brighton.