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Philip Hancock

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Caravans

Off Liverpool Road they crowd the wedge
of rented ground where the Five Town’s loop line
slips from the fast-track to London.
Into the open, they follow a rust-scabbed tractor; wait
to be fussed over on grass-verged avenues, Turtlewaxed.
A long weekend on the outskirts of a coastal town
or that once yearly fortnight, Potters’ shutdown.

Within these Formica fancies, expansion strips
yellow, grommets perish.  Gas mantles
are wasp nests.  Beds spring from veneered panelling
cluttered with brasses and framed families.  Cottage teapots
squat on shelves.  From the bowed window,
high kites in the afternoon, a Ferris wheel pauses.

But too soon they’re ball and hitched again,
following empty.  Tailgated
by HGVs, they snake in the crosswind.
As the motorway approaches the viaduct,
drivers demand hush, clench steering wheels.

Born at Newchapel, Stoke-on-Trent, Philip Hancock now lives and works in London. His poems and short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies.

Page(s) 31

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