The Tucana Constellation of the Southern Skies

3am in London, walking west to east, there is no darkness here, night-lights shine the way, like the plastic toucan’s beak when I was small, and it’s just rained, reflections bounce on the black-toffee stretch of Commercial road, that I walked east to west on student marches to Westminster, but now it’s not a righteous act, chucked out of a club at 2am, found asleep the third time, pretending to be drunk, after taking drinks from strangers, sipping to make the sweetness last, hiding out in the toilet when persistence and exhaustion bang on my brain, like popping-candy, and when the club closes they find me there asleep, my bag against the cistern, my body wedged between the toilet and the gingerbread-coloured cubicle wall, and now I’m free, the road ahead of me, bag back on my back, heading homeward, to familiar sights, maybe to find a bed for the night, or pass time walking there, my last square of chocolate melting in my mouth, while everyone in this concrete jungle’s asleep but me and this jaguar, that appears at Salmon lane, and tells me he’s going home, over the bridge, East along the canal, do I want to follow him, and because I do, I take pieces of my past from pockets, inch squares of baby blanket, scrabble pieces, bracelet seed-beads, and let them drop in time, like the Tucana constellation, star by star, to give sniffer dogs a trail, to find me, if I don’t make it home.