Turnout
(UK elections)
May buds open on boughs.
Posters flap from the lampposts
while impotent rain glistens
the day after an election,
nights drawing out, grey-green,
longer light for the country
to remain the same as before,
last year and other years
when the voters woke, a percentage
like the oak and the ash after winter,
and the candidates, their rosettes
like flowers pushing out of the greensward,
sleepless all night for the count.
I pass through a long street,
through colourful optimism
of placards strewing the pavement,
smiles past their sell-by dates
and pogled wars part forgotten.
Please, I want reality back
as summer arrives: will I get it?
Trying not to be noisy
we hurry along the back streets
and look in our message boxes
for the little things that have happened
as though it were all decided
when the May buds open on boughs.
SallyE
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