Jeremy Duffield
In Carrington Street, Nottingham
In this severed street,
on a rain-dark, early November evening,
with the car radio tuned to classic FM,
I look out
over the red-paint splash of reflected traffic lights,
beyond the telephone kiosk
where a shadowed silhouette marionettes a number,
to the road opposite, leading to the station;
and I recall an evening last summer,
in a hotel room thick-layered with perfume,
and the lady writer’s quipped remark
as I pushed a key deeper into the tight lock.
The music changes.
Delius - ‘Summer Night on the River’ -
and in a lost summer,
when a hot sun, blinding from the horizon,
swept an early morning train,
I remember seeking shadows on the stifling, silent halt
at March,
the foot-aching walk from Cambridge station to the
town
when, on a holiday Tuesday before exams,
when colleges were out of bounds,
girls frolicked on the Cam,
their loose tee-shirts exposing breasts,
their wet hair glistening,
their mouths wide with laughter
and a sparkle that could not make me smile
nor lift the ache,
nor recreate a time I laughed with joy.
Page(s) 15
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- Second Aeon
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