A Simple Act
'What is the likelihood of carnage?' she enquires,
a cloakroom girl, pretty, only semi-joking.
'I come in peace, quite harmless', he replies,
practising the smile the way they taught him,
as she delivers ticket number thirteen
and he leaves behind a library of secrets,
heads through the rubble of new housing,
where children play with lager cans and needles,
to one of whom he gives the ticket and some coins.
He remembers not to dwell on them, nor on
the girl, and whether she has violets on the window sill,
a dog called Wolf, a pre-cooked meal for three,
but, as the manual requires, checks both
distance and the time, boards a bus that's destined
for an unmarked suburb, presses a hidden button
on the mobile phone. Quite simple, really.
Peter Butler returned to poetry after a career in journalism and publishing. His first collection, Lunch at Shakespeare’s Local Peppercorn Poets), appeared in 2002.
Page(s) 50
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