Anthony Wilson
Membury
Was the hour-mark from home,
its guy-roped radio mast visible five minutes away,
on winter nights an eye-sized ember blinking at its tip.
Membury, where the wind off the plain is a knife,
petrol-outpost for the desperate, coffee-refuge
for men sitting singly outstared by their reflections;
where we never stopped, not even to pee or for gum,
place-between, time-point, neither family nor school,
our conversation eddying as your wedding ring
tapped Telemann on the steering wheel,
the miles charging by in a blur of furrows and sheep.
Did you know where you were driving us?
–Not only to masters who taught you,
the ancient hunger and cold, but cigarettes fumbled
in bushes, madness and stealing towels,
boys being kicked downstairs, then kicked again
for crying, then kicked for phoning home?
None of us kept a diary.
On clear nights at Membury we gazed into that
and said nothing. I can see you refuelling
with apple pie on the way back, toying, as you pull out,
with picking up that hitcher who reminds you
of your son. If I was that hitcher now I’d ask
Take me back to Membury. Buy me a coffee and we’ll talk.
Page(s) 51
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