I missed this sub before, but went back to it ater the interesting feedback
post, and I liked it a lot. (You don't often see such a graceful concise
description of a run down housing area!) & I liked the structure.

bw
SallyE

on 5/9/03 8:12 pm, Colin dewar at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Robinson's Sabbatical
>
>
> I was too confident
> driving that route to work, day after day.
> I took for granted
> the vast distances that armies marched in a month
> that I passed with my foot on the pedal
> so carelessly it seemed I dreamt my way
> along the road.
>
> I wasn't paying attention.
> I got distracted
> by a crow that flew straight overhead
> and in that direction
> turned off at the roundabout
> when I shouldn't have,
> and it's not an ordinary day anymore.
> It's not as calming as things are
> when they're dead familiar.
>
> I had forgotten what hazards I roared past,
> much faster to rabbit and robin
> than it seemed to me
> dreaming at the wheel.
> I'd become accustomed to the hedgerows
> with stiff twigs aligned in one direction only,
> see now what I'd missed before,
> the upturned thorns,
> mud caked on the heifer's haunch
> and the ruts on the track
> to the knacker's yard.
>
> If I drive in a straight line
> I might get back to where I was,
> to what seems precious now
> and not be diverted and lost,
> the hot car hard behind me,
> making it impossible to stop.
>
> If I could only find my way back
> I would not feel like a lobster
> that finds the water altered
> for the first time,
> so guided in
> to a rough area by night.
>
> Some people live here all their lives,
> in houses with dark windows,
> in doorways with plastic bags,
> blank faces of children staring back,
> syringes by bridges in moonlight,
> the genitals on walls in red paint.
>
> Heaven knows how I came to be here,
> in such a state.
> I will work as a rag man, a bone man,
> a banger of nails
> but I have to get back to my life.
>
>
>
> Colin