Night And Fog (Chatham)

The corporate buses ghost around the clock
Whisper null and white in the elsewhere
Display a bright river as their destination
Quieter than other vehicles they do not announce themselves
If you know you know as you wait mutely for your shift
under the cast satsuma light of a winter evening

The big lad who stands outside his house in his tiny yard
puffs out sweet air laced with coconut vanilla
that hangs and binds with the estuary climate
People come to see him in ones and twos to chat for a while
and get a little something for the long zero hours in-between calls

The grief stone rises on the lines wreathed in feathers
No-faced spirit that drifts down to the hight street
when the clocks go back sucking at plastic opium till it can get no whiter
Without its black gates bright nylon shivers in the trees
where hood muscle sleeps off a long day of having to

Orange labels shine from sparse beige shelves in the shop on the corner
Bright as possum eyes they guide uncertain hands to old eggs and soft fruit
Sifting for broken biscuits in the eternal Tuesday of the potless mind
Gathering at eight o’ clock for penny pastries a secret society
nod their wordless greetings and fumble for some kind of  change

All black dogs are grey in the headlights of delivery vans passing through
We are the thrown shadows of the people we might have been
before the decree was made official by a dead hand signature
It is easy to be invisible when seeing is selective
We exist in the somewhere, condemned to the status of night and fog

 

 

Barry Fentiman Hall


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