Watching you walk to work
I watch you walk down the South Circular Road.
In dappled shadows, leaves and sunshine
you seem to dissolve into dancing dark and light,
before you vanish in the bright distance
into your efficient world of telephones,
enquiries and tomorrow's appointments.
I imagine this: without warning, sunlight
surges into the room where you do your work,
illuminates desk, keyboard and filing cabinet
and touches the morning's urgency with delight.
I see your head bent over lines in databases,
and I picture you after school perched up a tree
in Long Eaton, smoking and giggling, a thread
of illicit blue smoke curling through the green.
Published in The Blue Guitar (Salmon Poetry 2011) and You've Been Great (Smith/Doorstop 2008)
I watch you walk down the South Circular Road.
In dappled shadows, leaves and sunshine
you seem to dissolve into dancing dark and light,
before you vanish in the bright distance
into your efficient world of telephones,
enquiries and tomorrow's appointments.
I imagine this: without warning, sunlight
surges into the room where you do your work,
illuminates desk, keyboard and filing cabinet
and touches the morning's urgency with delight.
I see your head bent over lines in databases,
and I picture you after school perched up a tree
in Long Eaton, smoking and giggling, a thread
of illicit blue smoke curling through the green.
Published in The Blue Guitar (Salmon Poetry 2011) and You've Been Great (Smith/Doorstop 2008)