One of these mornings...

In one week my exams will be over! I will be free to roam the hazy summer streets of Edinburgh before returning home to the delights of westcountry afternoons, Glastonbury festival and a Cornish adventure. The only difference will be that many of my friends will be spread across the world on their gap year travels-I wish them all the luck and the love in the world.

This is from Charlie Smith's 'The Meaning of Birds', a literary gem I recently uncovered from an old notebook.

It is not news that we live in a world
where beauty is unexplainable
and suddenly ruined
and has its own routines. We are often far
from home in a dark town, and our griefs
are difficult to translate into a language
understood by others. We sense the downswing of time
and learn, having come of age, that the reluctant
concessions made in youth
are not sufficient to heat the cold drawn breath
of age. Perhaps temperance
was not enough, foresight or even wisdom
fallacious, not only in conception
but in the thin acts
themselves. So our lives are difficult,
and perhaps unpardonable, and the fey gauds
of youth have, as the old men told us they would,
faded. But still, it is morning again, this day.
In the flowering trees
the birds take up their indifferent, elegant cries.
Look around. Perhaps it isn't too late
to make a fool of yourself again. Perhaps it isn't too late
to flap your arms and cry out, to give
one more cracked rendition of your singular, aspirant song.