Two Bus Journeys
1. There
That time of day when light is being sucked
imperceptibly back into the earth.
I'm crossing the Trent thinking of my father
in I952, crossing the Trent
to watch a Test Match by way of recovery
from a breakdown that had something to do with the war.
As the bus meanders through the river plain,
evening bubbling up behind the houses,
snagging in the branches of winter trees,
I'm thinking about my father and his loneliness
at that moment, and of my loneliness
and whether it is loneliness or just a talent for solitude.
I'm thinking also of the poetry reading I'm going to,
the little cluster of lights and the books of poems,
and how I'm really too tired to do this.
Traffic is thickening, singular drivers
tapping steering-columns to inaudible rhythms,
staring blankly forward, intent on their journeys.
2. Back
Dark now. I'm thinking about my wife travelling home
on another road, about the Coke can rolling
chimingly up and down the aisle of the bus,
about being tired and hungry, about the Norwegian
I met who told me the first edition of The Grapes of Wrath
to appear in Norway was translated as The Angry Raisins.
The man sitting in front of me is wheezing rhythmically,
like the sound of something planing imperfectly
across a grainy surface. Its a painful, tiring sound.
Streetlamps fizz in the distance, a service station
perched on a hill is lit and empty, fantastic
as a creature from the bottom of the ocean.
I think about the light clicking on at home,
the tiny grinding noise the time switch makes,
the gasp of the central heating. When I get there
my wife will be sitting in her dressing gown eating porridge.
I think about the human imagination, how remarkable
it is, how bewildering. The bus speeds into darkness.
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The