A M Forster
An Epilogue
A flurry of snow chills his face
in yet another bus station.
Only the colours of the buses change.
Destinations that once rolled mystery
around his tongue, he can now see
without going.
The larger towns will have a shopping mall
piping cheap music into a food court
with a Country Kitchen and a Burger King,
and a dying High Street, crushed
into uniformity. Smaller towns
dream of being larger and villages
close doors and curtain windows.
A child, eyes like Christmas morning,
gawps from an idling bus. He once stared like that
at other people’s houses when,
courage boosted by a pack
of short-trousered explorers, he braved
the oak-tree boundary of the familiar
to see a different rose scent a garden
and himself reflected in someone else’s pond.
Now, boundaries dissolved by age
he lifts his collar against the wind,
his skin prickled by the sensation
that he’s running out of road.
Page(s) 31
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