Sonnet
Sheffield’s spun in an outbreak of half-hearted snow –
the kind that doesn’t stick but blusters up streets
where cars, trams and bikes come and go
while workers trudge pavements on lunch breaks.
I don’t know what the hell I’ll say to you
when it comes to this catching up, four years on –
what else but to make small talk on the who
what where and whens of those years gone
like this flurry of sudden, street-sweeping whiteness?
The Cavendish spills open as the 95 pulls up:
six or so kids drift off towards campus
when suddenly my mobile’s relentless as gossip –
Hi – no worries – I’ve booked us this place to eat…
(hell, I know why I’m doing this…) So, where shall we meet?
Lament
Here now, it’s hard to believe this place –
yellowed wallpaper, towels hung over
every decent beer except the guest –
is where we first met and that blur
of brilliance – a world from this pint
and the torn fabric of a duff pool table –
meant the next week, the next fortnight,
were the closest things ever get to simple.
So if this is how I know us, want us –
the two who clicked on an understanding
of close as close to sparseness, bluntness –
then that’s why, aware or drifting,
I’ve come to sit in this selfsame chair,
selfsame spot; listening to the traffic
which you must be a part of, somewhere,
pitched as it is among frantic and orphic
while one by one the pigeons flutter off;
draining the glass and closing my book
as the lights click on, someone coughs,
and the place is good as lost, however I look. |
