DO NOT
"PARK" OR "OBSTRUCT"
THIS GARAGE
IN USE
The white markings hieroglyphic
To some otherness.
Far from the field's lone corner
And long-day's labour
He walks down the alleyway.
A climbing of ivy
Fades red through green
Through the cracks
Of the wall that he passes,
Grasping tight white stacks
Of scrawls of the countryside.
A last gasp.
Continuing forward he stops
By a doorway
Sunken into the wall.
The light blue paint stripped
In lined flaky rust.
An impulse swells
To see what lies behind
The withered wood.
A strange sensation.
He walks on,
Shaking thoughts from his mind,
Past cockle-winkled shingle-shanked
Roofs that glisten in the moist air,
The light bending in the grooves
Of wet cobbles.
________
The slow walk in the black sweet
Dead sleep of the backstreet,
Hushed by the blanket of evening.
He trudges through
Lamp-pools of light.
A lad cock-legged round lamppost;
A mother smoking over pram,
Hand splayed like dead stalks
Holding a smouldering stub;
Two girls clad in designer
Tracksuits, black lettering,
Speaking in dulcet drooping
Words, ungraspable,
Pass him in the alley.
He reaches the stripped doorway
He'd paused at before.
The wizened knuckles of stone
Holding the door
In the pale light like
A playing card,
Or the man who had held his sketches
Outstretched, beneath wrinkled lip
And horn-rimmed dissatisfaction,
A smirk smirched on his face
Like the half pipe of guttering,
Leaky, jutting out
Over the brickwork.
Homeward.
On through the alley
Past beaten in metal sheets.
DO NOT
"PARK" OR "OBSTRUCT"
THIS GARAGE
IN USE
Those same unfamiliar words.
He stands outside
Of his temporary letting,
Home yet utterly lost.
