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Michael Bartholomew-Biggs

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Zone two

At the station exit
a false proscenium arch reveals
and frames a square of late October.
Evening mist; a hint of coal-smoke mixed
with ozone off the District Line;
stage right, the railway embankment
uplit by a wash of sulphur yellow
from the candle-strip of lamps
that curves across the dusky park
towards a sky-glow from the glassworks;
disappearing in the distance
a schoolboy finishing a training run.

When the fogs were thicker,
bitter as a pack of acid drops,
figures would emerge on muffled steps
along the path just there
beside the see-saw, all of them
but one resolving into strangers.

Now I'm walking it again
and treading on the cracks; whatever
I thought threatening
is standing back amazed how brave I've been
not clinging to nostalgia's empty hand.
Anticipation makes a comeback:
the smell of lemons in a changing room;
the whisper round a soda screw-top
as an ice-cold bottle opens.
The green card corner
of a slant-cut ticket in my pocket
reassures my thumbnail.
Trains run further west from here:
this far tonight; next time a few stops more.

The running schoolboy's coming back
towards me with that look
of timid optimism. If I could,
I'd throw a towel around his shoulders,
made of better parts of memories,
and set his mind at rest:
he's going to make the qualifying time
and won't do badly in the race.

 

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is a mathematician at the University of Hertfordshire. He has published in magazines and in two pamphlets: Anglicised by common use (Waldean Press 1998) and Inklings of complicity (Pikestaff 2003).

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