Us! (for the New Hanbury Creative Writing Project)

We don’t flinch
or as Jack Kerouac once wrote,
‘say a commonplace thing’.

These writers here,
my writers,
have held my hand
more than I theirs.

In these last minutes
there is just the
sound of pens
over paper,

a piano,
and Billy shouting
In the garden, again.

We are free
when we write.
We tell the truth.

We are us.