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Tony Lucas

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Colleagues

Saw Harris in the bookshop yesterday.
Taking a few days leave, he said,
although he hadn’t gone away
and he was buying stuff for work.
‘This is good’, he told me, holding out
a title I’d instinctively avoid.
I told him I was reading nothing
later than the mid tenth century.

‘That’s interesting,’ he said, his sloping shoulders
and apologetic face coming between me
and the section I’d begun to browse.
Then he was talking of some student
he once knew, with crackpot notions
on the origin of life, who’d now become
a widely read authority on subjects
well outside of my concern.

So, I reminded him of Susie,
and the trouble with the sandwiches.
He didn’t even want to think of it
this week, but guessed that Winston may
have had the car keys all along.

By now, I’d caught the attention
of the shop assistant long enough
to get my order logged and, though
he offered to buy coffee, I decided
that it wasn’t worth the risk, and said
my car was on a meter, where, in fact,
I’d walked along the river, making
the most of a benignly sunny afternoon.

 


Tony Lucas’s recent collection, Rufus at Ocean Beach, was published by Stride in October 1999. He is the vicar at St. George’s Church in Borough, London.

 

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